Fahim loves him some cream puffs.

He’s told me that his mother used to make them years ago, so I should be able to make them, too. So, one day, I hunted up a recipe and made them.

My first batch was a flop. It was a recipe from one of those sites where you can leave comments and ratings for each recipe, and this one was highly rated. A few people had problems with the recipe, though, and said as much, but then other commenters broke in with criticisms like “This is so easy. How stupid would you have to be to screw it up?” Which wasn’t exactly, ah, heartwarming, you know?

I looked around some more, and found a better recipe at the Joy of Baking. The list of ingredients was identical in both recipes, but in the Joy of Baking recipe, it said to keep stirring the dough in the pot until the dough forms a thick ball.

Then, beat the dough until the dough becomes lukewarm – this releases a lot of steam.

Considering that I live in a high humidity area, these two steps, which both reduce the amount of moisture in the dough, are probably what makes all the difference in the world from dense awful cream puffs to cream puffs that rise and expand like you wouldn’t believe!

Choux Pastry

Ingredients

• 70 grams (1/2 cup) all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 57 grams (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
• 120 ml (1/2 cup) water
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 205C (400F, gas mark 6).
2. Sift together flour, sugar, and salt.
3. Put butter and water into a pot over medium heat and bring to a boil.
4. As soon as it boils, remove from heat and add the flour mix.
5. Return the pot to heat and stir constantly until the dough comes together to form a thick ball.
6. Transfer the dough to a mixer (or, in my case, food processor that pretends to be a mixer) and beat on low speed until the dough is lukewarm and the steam has been released.
7. Add eggs gradually to the dough while continuing to mix it until it forms a thick paste.
8. Spoon or pipe mounds onto a baking sheet (you can line it with parchment paper if you like).
9. Bake 15 minutes, then reduce the oven to 177C (350F, gas mark 4) and bake an additional 30-40 minutes or until the cream puffs are a nice golden colour and dry inside.
10. Turn the oven off and let the cream puffs dry out another 10-15 minutes.
11. Fill with whipping cream, custard, icing, or whatever your heart desires.

Notes

• I’ve used aluminum bakeware (cream puffs stuck) and glass (got a very shiny, hard texture on the bottom of the cream puffs), and wasn’t overly happy with either. Silicone was fantastic, as was a non-stick baking sheet. I haven’t used parchment paper because it doesn’t exist here.
• Cream puffs can be filled with sweet or savoury fillings.
• Best when made shortly before consuming, especially if you live in a humid area like we do. By the next day, the cream puffs are completely floppy and almost rubbery. They still taste fine, but the texture isn’t, ah, quite what it could be.
• The finished cream puff pastry dough can easily be refrigerated or frozen with no ill effects. I’ve done both quite a few times and there’s been no difference in the quality of the resulting cream puffs.
• The Joy of Baking website adds an egg wash glaze. I’ve been too lazy to do that step and mine still turned out fine.

Cream puffs are a LOT easier to make than you might think. They were a lot easier than I thought they would be.  

Fahim’s mom loves eating them plain. Fahim prefers them stuffed with chocolate buttercream icing. I’ll take them with chocolate buttercream icing, or whipped cream, or lemon curd with whipped cream, or…

What about you? How do you like your cream puffs?

No doubt the majority of us have believed, at least at one time, that kneading bread dough for 5 or 10 minutes, or longer, was necessary if the bread was going to develop properly and rise.

Fortunately, especially for those of us with problem and painful joints, it simply isn’t true.

Personally, instead of kneading for minutes at a time, I’ll do one of two things:

1. After letting the dough rest for 20-30 minutes (autolyze), I’ll knead for 10 strokes, let the dough rest for 15 minutes, and then repeat twice for a total of 3 sets of kneading and resting. Then, after another 15 or so minutes, I’ll do a few stretch and folds. Then I let the dough rise until doubled in volume, then do the same old shaping and second rise that kneaders do.
2. After letting the dough rest for 20-30 minutes (autolyze), I’ll do a few stretch and folds, then let the dough rest 45 minutes, then repeat for a total of 3 stretch and fold then rest sessions. After the last rest after the final stretch and fold, I’ll shape it and let it do the regular second rise.

Even with my severely borked joints, I can do these, and it’s much easier and much less effort than using my rather, ah, sad food processor to try to mix and knead the dough for me.

Better yet, my bread turns out just as fluffy as bread made by those who knead.

Stretching and folding is something I learned from Sourdough Home when I was looking for easier kneading methods for me. There’s a much longer explanation of the stretch and fold method there, along with videos that demonstrate it. Well worth checking out.

Oh, yeah, and while you’re at it, check out this Panda Bread. Very cute!

Among the recipes Fahim’s mom taught me is this Tamarind Fish Curry. It’s spicy, a little bit sour (from the tamarind), and absolutely delish.

This is one of my all-time favourite ways to eat fish. 

Mama Farook’s Sri Lankan Tamarind Fish Curry

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons tamarind paste
• 2 teaspoons red chilli pepper powder*
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 500 grams firm white fish, cut into serving pieces
• 1/2 small onion, sliced
• 2 tablespoons oil (we use virgin coconut)
• 4-5 curry leaves
• 1/2 small onion, sliced
• 4" x 1/2" piece cinnamon stick
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

Directions

1. Mix the tamarind paste with the red chilli pepper powder, turmeric, and salt along with enough water to form a thinnish paste. Pour over the fish and onion and cover the fish thoroughly. Set aside.
2. Into a hot pot, add the oil, then the curry leaves, onion, and cinnamon stick. Stir frequently.
3. When the onions are sllightly browned, add the garlic and cook for another minute or so.
4. Add the marinating fish and onion and enough water to almost cover the fish.
5. Let simmer until the fish is cooked and the sauce is reduced and thick, about 10 minutes.

*That’s the amount of red chilli pepper powder that Fahim’s mom uses. When I make it for just Fahim and I, I use 2 tablespoons (sometimes more) red chilli pepper powder. We prefer it hotter. We’re also insane. Unless you’re a seriously insane freak of nature, use 2 teaspoons as the maximum.

That’s it! Not complicated at all, but oh so good!

We use virgin coconut oil for the authentic Sri Lankan curry flavour. If you don’t have any, use any flavourless oil.

If you don’t have curry leaves, omit. There is no substitution.

If you want it less spicy, reduce the red chilli pepper powder or use black pepper instead.

I hope you enjoy!

Our neighbor has a starfruit plant. Tree? Bush? Tree, I think.

Many of the branches hang over into our yard, and I get to watch the starfruit grow.

And then, when the starfruit is ripe, I get to pick it. And eat it.

Happiness.

We have a neighborhood bread trishaw. We also have neighborhood ice cream trishaws.

This bread trishaw goes through our neighborhood, and others, playing an annoying tune that everyone recognizes as belonging to the bread trishaw. Those who want to buy bread run out to the road with rupees in hand and buy… whatever.

I should mention that this frequently happens before breakfast so there’s fresh bread in time for breakfast, bread being a common-enough breakfast item.

They sell loaves of bread, sweet buns, fish buns, egg buns, and other such baked goods and pastries.

The last image is of a bread truck. Same idea as the bread trishaw, just bigger in scope.

You Canadians and Americans have drive thrus. We have bread trishaws.

Well, mostly, anyway.

Being a Canadian, I didn’t know that coconut scrapers were called coconut scrapers – I would have called them shredders or something else, but coconut scraper it is, at least in this part of the world. After all, how many coconuts did I ever buy when I lived in Canada? Less than half a dozen? Yeah, that’s not experienced.

As it turns out, there are several types of coconut scrapers, and what kind you go with depends on your needs.

Hand-held type

These coconut scrapers that are somewhat similar to lime zesters. They scrape small amounts of coconut at a time, so take much longer to scrape a coconut. If you’re looking for a small amount of long shreds or wide shreds, then this would do the job, but if you’re looking at scraping an entire coconut, then, well, let’s just say my hands are already throbbing…

The images are from Gourmet Sleuth. There’s also an image there to a bench coconut scraper that they refer to as a Thai wood coconut grater. It isn’t. I mean it isn’t just a Thai design. That design exists in Sri Lanka, and, no doubt, India, Bangladesh, and other countries in the region.

Counter-top models

C-clamp coconut scraper

We use a coconut scraper with a c-clamp that attaches to the counter, either temporarily or permanently. The clamp becomes loosened while I use it, but that’s to be expected since I also use some heavy cloth to protect the counter – don’t want to scratch the counter surface, after all.

Other people clamp theirs on and never remove it. If it’s attached tightly enough, it NEVER loosens. We have nowhere to permanently mount, so we remove and re-attach at will.

With this c-clamp scraper, I can scrape a whole coconut in about a minute. When my joints aren’t bothering me. When they are, it might take me a minute and a half. This coconut scraper is highly effective at getting the job done quickly. And, as long as you hold the coconut around the shell with your fingers not close to the shell edge, you won’t even injure myself.

Clumsy me has managed to not injure myself yet, knock on wood.

This Australian site has a counter-top c-clamp style coconut grater for sale at AUS $49.01. The one I use costs around Rs. 900 (about US $9) at Arpico.

Suction/vacuum based coconut scraper

My mother in law used to have a coconut scraper with a suction base, but the suction was so horrible that it took one person to hold the scraper in place while the other person scraped the coconut. Hardly practical or useful, and really, just an all-round failure in engineering. NOT the kind I would ever recommend.

The very next time we went shopping, we bought the kind with the c-clamp.

The image for the suction mounted is from Spices of India.

Bench scrapers

My mother in law uses a bench coconut scraper. She straddles the bench with the scraper out front and scrapes the coconut against the blade. She’s pretty quick at it and can have a coconut scraped in the same time it takes me to scrape a coconut with the c-clamp kind.

I can’t use it because, quite frankly, I wouldn’t be able to stand again. Pesky bad knees. And back.

The first image is from Temple of Thai while the second image was take at my favourite mortar & pestle and cast iron griddle shop.

Motorized

These kinds are really more for high-volume coconut scraping. I saw one at Arpico once, priced at around Rs. 7500 (about $75 US). Saw another one at my favourite mortar & pestle and cast iron griddle shop for around the same price. Yehaw!

You might also be interested in reading a post over at Mental Masala about attaching the round scraper ball to a power drill. There’s also a picture of the suction-mounted coconut scraper that I so hate and find so completely useless.

So.

Clear as mud? Questions? Does that tell you everything you ever wanted to know about coconut scrapers?

I wrote this entry back in August 2007 but didn’t get around to posting it. I have no idea why. Laziness on my part? Probably. Lousy memory? Absolutely. Anyway, here it is. An Ayurvedic cough syrup with no medicinal ingredients to cause side effects, safe for just about anybody, that tastes good and actually works. Yay!

—–

I made some today. Pretty interesting, in its own way. See, I had a cold a few weeks ago, but I still have a lingering dry hack, which I’m known to do, and they can last for months with me. There’s no good reason for it that I know of – it just happens. And I’ve still got the cough. So when Fahim and I saw the Ayurvedic doctor in Kegalle a few days ago, she gave me a recipe for cough syrup.

Ayurvedic Cough Syrup

Ingredients

• 500 grams dates
• 200 grams raisins
• 1000 grams (or 1 liter) water
• 500 grams sugar

Directions

1. Remove seeds and stems from dates, then put dates, raisins, and water into a pot and let simmer on low until the liquid volume has decreased by about half. It’ll look like brown mushy lumpy stuff.
2. At that point, I whirred whirred it with my stick blender, but Fahim assures me that this isn’t at all necessary. After all, people have been making this cough syrup for hundreds or thousands of years, and they didn’t have stick blenders. But since I like my little toy and I like blending things, I did.
3. Strain. I used cloth with a fairly fine weave. Too fine, really, since it took quite a bit of effort to squeeze the liquid out. This is not an exact science, either, so don’t stress about making sure you’ve squeezed every ounce of liquid out of the stuff. At any rate, I squeezed until the remaining pulp was stiff like playdough to the point of keeping shape.
4. Add sugar to the liquid in a pot and stir until it’s dissolved. If necessary, heat it over the stove to dissolve the sugar if you’re not patient. Which is me.
5. Bottle. I stored it in the fridge and it kept for months. It might have kept longer, but I used it all up.

I gave the ingredients all in the same unit to make it easier for y’all to convert to whatever quantities and units you prefer without having to hassle with conversion formulas. Just keep the same ratio and yer good to go. Also, exact measurements are not required, and if you want to increase the water amount, feel free.

This cough syrup ended up having a syrupy thickness just like commercial cough syrups do, but it tasted good. And, so far, it seems to be working. I’ve had a few attacks of the dry coughs, took the syrup – about a tablespoon like the Ayurvedic doc recommended – and no cough.

Happiness reigns.

I recently got a new cast iron griddle. I happen to be very fond of it and use it fairly often, including for making flat bread. Takes a while to heat up, as all cast iron does, but has very even heat when it does. Beautiful, beautiful!

I’ve used it a few times as the base of my baking-on-the-stove setup, and it works just fine. It works about the same as my two aluminum lids stacked on each other, so no benefit there.

However, if used frequently in this manner with a high flame, over time, the seasoning on the cast iron does burn off. If you use your cast iron pan frequently otherwise, it’s probably not an issue, and for me, it’s not an issue yet, but it is something to be aware of if you’re going to use a seasoned cast iron pot or griddle or such on a regular basis for baking on the stove.

In my case, since the cast iron griddle offers no benefits over my aluminum lids, I’m switching back to the aluminum lids since they don’t get damaged by frequent use and, honestly, I wouldn’t care even if they did. My cast iron griddle, on the other hand, I don’t want to re-season.

Except that Fahim tells me that no one calls it kiri aluwa, apparently. Ah well.

This is a sweet that I encountered very soon after I came here. And as usual with most sweets, I adore it.

In the past, we’ve bought it from the grocery store. Milk toffee usually comes in a plastic rectangular container with about, oh, 250 grams of it or so per box.

But then we had a sugar craving, and I decided that finally, finally, finally, I would make milk toffee myself, if only to say I have and could. Because, don’t you know, this is a Sri Lankan sweet and I live in Sri Lanka now, so it’s just something that should be done.

I’ve broken the recipe into two columns, one for each size of sweetened condensed milk can we have here. The smaller can size seems to be what is more common in other parts of the world, including Canada and the US.

Sri Lankan Milk Toffee

Ingredients

400 grams (14 oz)	525 grams (18.375 oz)	sweetened condensed milk
30 grams	40 grams	water
350 grams	460 grams	sugar
2	3	cardamom pods, dehusked and crushed (optional)
1 teaspoon	1 teaspoon	vanilla extract

Directions

1. Put the sweetened condensed milk, water, and sugar in a pot over medium-low heat. Stir constantly to prevent scorching.
2. Continue stirring constantly until the mixture begins to crystallize and leaves the sides of the pan.
3. Add the sugar and continue to stir constantly (I’m not kidding about this) until the mixture is past the boiling point and starts to foam. (My total cooking time was around 15-20 minutes.)
4. Remove from heat and add the cardamoms and vanilla. Mix well.
5. Pour the mixture into a lightly buttered 9×13" pan. When cooler but not yet hard, cut into small diamonds or squares.
6. When cool, separate and store in an airtight container.

The directions I got included no information on the temperature it should reach or whether it’s at a softball or hardball stage when it’s done, so I can’t help you there. At least, not yet. I don’t have a candy thermometer – they don’t exist here as far as I can tell. But next time I make it, I’ll check for soft/hard ball and leave an edit at the bottom of this post.

Fahim told me it was done when it started foaming on the sides of the pan. As in, not foaming everywhere, just at the sides.

The longer this cooks, the harder the resulting toffee will be. It tends to be a bit grainy regardless, or at least I’m told that no matter what I do, it will always have crystallized sugar. I’m tempted to experiment with adding butter to see if that helps – I prefer smooth smooth toffee, which also doesn’t exist here.

At any rate, the milk toffee we’ve bought tended to be hard and crunchy, whereas mine was definitely soft enough to bite through without much effort, and I definitely prefer mine soft. The original directions said something like "starts to crystallize and leave the sides of the pan." To my way of thinking, that would produce a milk toffee that’s hard like we buy in the stores, so I want mine less done than that.

If you’re like Fahim, you’ll add raisins and chopped nuts to the mixture – after it’s removed from the heat. I didn’t this time. I wanted to make milk toffee the right way/mostly authentic way at least once before I ventured into variations.

And if you’re Fahim, you’ll also beg me to experiment with chocolate variations. Because you’re a chocolate fiend. And for no other reason.

I hope you enjoy. And please, let me know how this turns out for you if/when you give it a try.

I’ve mentioned before that not everyone here owns a proper stove with oven. It’s quite common for people to use propane burners like these. Although not everyone can afford this much.

We have one neighbor, an old woman, who lives down our road and comes to the abandoned lot next to our house every now and then to pick out pieces of wood for her to use as a source of fuel for cooking.