Come on. Tell me that I’m not the only person who has ever taken a recipe off a can and made it into something. Everyone starts somewhere, right? In my case, however, I didn’t start here. In truth, beyond all recipe hunting online, it was the pumpkin puree can that featured the ideal recipe for me. How selfish am I that I’d take that over an authentic and delicious actual pie recipe, right? Wrong. Can recipes can be real too… right (see what I did there)? Can’t they? Even if they are not, perhaps the least they could do is provide reconciliation to those of us incapable of research and in desperation of a last-minute birthday gift. Wait, that is exactly what this was. So, backtrack to July 18, 2016. This was almost two years ago. This was a birthday that I often didn’t celebrate rather bombastically. In fact, for the two years prior (2014, 2015), I showed no interest at all and continued with my life. Well, I think I may have celebrated it, just on the wrong day. But not this time! No, I had intentions on crafting an exquisite pie recipe that I knew would just be enamored and prized. That’s when I ran out of time and opted to craft the corporate-mandated formulaic pumpkin pie recipe that existed on the back label of the can I picked up at the store. Nothing wrong with that, right? At least it came from my heart… and barely my paycheck. There’s a first time for everything, and to be honest I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with showing no creativity at all when it comes to cooking/baking, because some people have difficulty finding creativity in that sort of thing. And that’s perfectly fine; I mean, everyone has their own methods of application. While I consider myself relatively adept at applying creativity through cooking (which, let’s be honest, is a rather broad playing field), I think there is equally something to be said about taking a foundational recipe and basing your creative decisions off that. By doing this, you step outside of your own head and into someone else’s. Someone created the can recipe, right? It was somebody’s idea. And that is something worth appreciating. On the other hand, I might just be finding excuses for why I didn’t take time to prepare an original pumpkin pie… I even just bought the crust from the freezer aisle. Here’s the can recipe: ¾ cup sugar ½ tsp salt 1 tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp ground ginger ¼ tsp ground cloves 2 large eggs 1 can (15 oz.) Libby’s 100% pure pumpkin (oops, now you know what can that I used) 1 can (12 fl. Oz.) evaporated milk 1 unbaked 9-inch deep-dish pie shell And there you have it… an unoriginal recipe. But that’s not to say that you can’t make it your own; after all, it was my idea of a birthday celebration. Think of it as a framework. Once you understand how to make pumpkin pie, then you can customize it however you want! There is this notion that you must learn the rules before you break them, and I don’t uphold this philosophy in all contexts. However, since baking is a basic chemistry, the rules are important. This recipe outlines the rules. Have fun with this foundational recipe and I look forward to your own customizations!
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Someone had to be let go on July 17, 2016… let go home early, that is. And that someone was me! Oh, what was I to do with the extra few hours of my life?! Oh, how perfect the day was that I hadn’t crammed myself into a corner with piles on piles of paperwork and taxes! Oh, what a beautiful day it was outside that I caught the best sunlight of the day, enough that I admired taking a walk… to my car to go home. I was given several extra hours on this day that I otherwise would have spent at work, and at first, I didn’t know what I was to do! But then it became clear: a timely culinary preparation of Italian culture that marries together a rather exotic blend of ingredients. I think that there is a misconception about tiramisu in that it is a very difficult dish to prepare. However, in my experience, the dish itself is not difficult. It just takes a bit of time – something we all have but never allow. That’s why I took the opportunity to make this dish today; after all, how often do you get let home early (unless your boss is planning to let you go)? This is not the delicate harmony of the experience, though, because the backbone of this dish rests in the ladyfingers, not the colorful layers of which the ladyfingers are apart. Surely, I could have bought ladyfingers at the store, except that I could not find them. Rather than waste time trying to derive a substitute or some other half-assed alternative, I chose the time-consuming method of preparing them myself. Go me, right? A+ for effort! The ladyfinger baking incited a new type of baking experience. Have you ever wondered where the angel-food-cake-like texture of certain desserts comes from? Or perhaps, a meringue? The chemistry of this design involves an understanding of a fanciful baking technique that I learned for the first time with this dish: whipping and folding. First, I had to separate egg yolks from egg whites, which I did by cracking the egg in two and dancing the yolk back in forth between the two halves. The egg white separated naturally from here. Once the egg whites were isolated, I had to whip the hell out of them until a cloud was created. This cloud is no simple feat; you must whip those whites until they don’t move – that is, until you can turn the bowl upside-down without the cloud drooping. You want it to form peaks when you release the whisk. Now, this is easy to do if you have an electric mixer… but I did not have that at my disposal. By hand, this project was a workout. Thankfully, though, I learned from my mistakes trying to make coconut macaroons and maintained a froth that was perfectly stagnant. But this is only the first step. Once you create the perfect froth, you must fold – not mix – the froth into your batter. This means you take a rubber spatula or a big ass spoon and gently “roll” the batter, as though you were bringing the bottom to the top and vice versa. If you mix it, you risk losing those air bubbles and ergo the spongey texture that the meringue guarantees. Delicacy is the key to success here, because negligence will yield a horribly incomplete and runny batch of ladyfingers. And you don’t want that, do you? A good thing to remember about this process of folding the whites with the batter: there isn’t too much froth. It may look like that at first, and perhaps you could get away leaving a bit out. But keep folding it in until it’s fully incorporated, and you’ll see that the froth measurements were not misplaced. Be wary, however, because folding too much will cause the froth stress, and it will lose its cloudy texture. Oh, how much meringue resembles a glass vase. You can see how my ladyfingers bulged just a bit, but overall the shape was maintained. And, they were beautifully spongey (because the eggs were not disturbed, they did not separate during baking)! The biggest learning experience with these was learning from mistakes – the mistakes being my coconut macaroons back from chapter one which did not quite turn out as planned. After these were cooled, it was time to put together my tiramisu, which is not a baking delicacy believe it or not. For this dish, I started by separating eggs once more, engaging in the same beating and folding process as before. But this time, the mixture was folded into a colorful blend of ingredients: mascarpone cheese, sugar, brandy (a decent amount), and only a tablespoon of cold espresso, all done over top of boiling water so that the sugar could dissolve. You can see that this dish brings alcohol and coffee together in an authentic way, as these two items might otherwise be thought of as beverage topics and nothing more. About alcohol, I am not much of a drinker. However, I value what it adds to dishes when used correctly. For example, cooking with red wine unlocks beautiful flavor nuances that would otherwise be left undiscovered. And now today, I’m using brandy to add an earthy layer of flavor to a dessert preparation (which complements the notes of coffee rather eloquently). Overlooking the alcohol part of alcohol, every type of alcohol or alcohol-based beverage offers something different to the culinary table in ways that most ingredients could not, because you get acidity, flavor, and body characteristics that can enhance dishes in more ways than one. Flavor is the key characteristic in this case; with brandy being a rather robust spirit with deep flavors that can augment most desserts. With coffee and cocoa both being present in this dish, you can surely see the possibilities of alcohol when considered beyond the after-dinner digestif window. Completing this dish was a linear process; I ripped the fingers apart and dipped them in the cup of espresso that I had previously prepared, layered them in a dish, and piled the egg/cheese/brandy/coffee mixture on top. Cocoa powder was sprinkled generously across the top, and the finished concoction rested in the fridge for hours to solidify. Yes, this dish is made with raw egg. But never fear! Raw egg is not inherently unhealthy. The key is to ensure that your eggs are Grade A or AA, coming from reliable sources and not infested with pesticides and other weird shit. Then it’s just a waiting game. Go for a walk or the archery range or something. Give your tiramisu four to six hours. What did I do for that time? Well, for one thing, I watched the following TED talk: While this TED talk may not have much relevance to this post from a superficial perspective, consider the implications of this talk. What would we be as a society if we based our opinions of others off abstract information like culture, societal norms, ethnicity, age, sex, and what have you? Such could be applied for the mindset of making this dish. You may order this dish from a restaurant and think that it’s a luxurious and authentic Italian dessert, which it is, but making the dish requires you to think about your ingredients in new ways. Brandy and coffee in a dessert? Raw eggs? Mascarpone cheese, which I’ve never even heard of? Think of your familiarity like a circle that expands over time. The more you open yourself up to, the bigger that comfort circle gets. And the bigger it gets, the more prepared you will be for the challenges of life. You start life and are taught the things that you are thought will be required of you, but eventually you must make choices yourself about what you will become. You decide how big your comfort circle gets. There comes a time when all consumers must become producers. The notion of the food chain suggests that there must be a balance, because otherwise anything and everything would be extinct. Furthermore, there would be no food chain unless there was balance among all parties. The case that I’m referring to is somewhat different from that of evolution. No, I’m referring to how we take what we learn from society and create new molds from that knowledge. In other words, think about the food that you order at the restaurant. It’s great, right? Now think about how much you pay for that food. Why spend all your earnings on survival when you are perfectly capable of sustaining yourself? My belief that everyone should know how to cook is more than a belief; it’s a principle of sustainability. If you can’t sustain yourself, then you are a consumer of society – not a producer. You are automatically at the bottom of the food chain. I’ve reflected in prior entries about why I feel that understanding the world in which we live is integral to knowing how to survive within in from an economical standpoint, but I’ve not yet discussed this balance of consumer-producer that is equally imperative to a functioning world. If there are no consumers, then there are no producers, and vice versa. The two depend on each other; think of it like supply and demand. Consumer demands determine what the producers supply. However, there is a limit to how much that supply-demand scale can fall outside equilibrium. If it becomes too far unbalanced, the system will fall apart, and neither will be physically able to sustain the other. How does this relate to today’s entry? Well, consider now the fast food that you buy; it’s a great illustration of this framework. You pay $4 for a breakfast sandwich every day. That’s $28 per week that you spend on breakfast sandwiches alone. Now think about the coffee you buy on top of that – an extra $15-30 per week depending on how much you drink. Now, you’re budgeting around $50 per week on breakfast. That is the economical equivalent of your demand, which requires sufficient supply. But now multiply that by the millions who demand the same. Do you see how the integrity of economical balance is threatened? Look at how far the US is already in debt – it comes back to supply and demand (the result being industrialization). Most of us have become accustomed to the rushed style of living that almost dictates the kind of demand outlined above. Recognize however that this “dictation” is only marketing. After all, what are businesses concerned with? Your needs or their profits? And with the $50 per week you spend on breakfast, you are giving into the fallacy that your demand is required because of a lifestyle that you chose. Never forget that your life, when broken down, is made up of choices and nothing else. You can choose to spend $50 a week on breakfast, or you can break from that fallacy and discover better uses for your money and time. In the same way, supply and demand is a system based on choices. It’s just that in contemporary society, those choices often appear forced because of corporate marketing. That is why I am writing this blog – to illustrate the big picture with both a consumer and producer perspective. You can’t understand the world unless you have all the perspectives. But you’ll never get all the perspectives, so your understanding of the world will always be limited. Therefore, keeping your mind open is vital to balance; if everyone thought the same way, no progress would be made. Hence, the producer-consumer balance would be threatened. Acknowledging this perspective for me meant taking a step back and recreating one of the most popular breakfast sandwiches at the famous Seattle-based coffeehouse chain known as Starbucks: the bacon gouda sandwich. I’m going to put this very simply: there is nothing special about this sandwich, and it is not worth the $4 you pay for it. So why do you pay it? Do you feel that you have no other choice because of your busy schedule? Let me offer you a new approach to that mindset. Start by clearing your mind. Now, think about what you are good at. What do you do for a living? Are you a doctor or a marketer? Perhaps you are into real estate. Maybe you’re an actor. Whatever you are and whatever you like, it doesn’t matter. Why? Because everyone does the same things. We all eat, sleep, use the restroom, breathe, and drink (some of us more than others). Think about the time you spend doing the things that are necessary for your survival. Statistically, most countries get anywhere between six and a half to nine hours of sleep every night. That’s anywhere from one-fourth to one-third of your entire life. Eating and other necessary things probably take up another significant fraction. Hence, the time you spend working and, well, conscious, is already limited to begin with. But back to the above, how you spend that time rests in your choices. Your productivity is already biologically limited; why do we try so hard to combat that? Take a moment, consider what I’ve just said, and now think about the daily routine that you set for yourself. Do you ever give yourself time? Or do you cram that time as much as you can, consciously aware of the choices that ergo require you to spend so much money on fast food? I am by no means suggesting that business is an excuse for giving into the system’s supply, but the implications I am outlining here is that you always have choices, whether you realize it or not. If you gave yourself thirty minutes one morning at the beginning of each week (or, even better, the weekend!), you could easily prepare breakfast for yourself for the entire week. And make your own coffee at home; you waste no time at all if you prepare your coffee while you get ready. That’s $50 you save right there, not to mention how much better it is for both your body and your wellbeing. Time management is certainly imperative to success in this world; think about cooking as part of that time management, not a hobby. That’s how I fit it in. I always consider cooking a necessary part of my schedule – not free time – and that allows me to ensure that I always have food ready for myself. In fact, this mindset is how I can do anything and everything that I want. I treat it like work, and I encourage you to do the same. Thinking about your entire life in this way removes the distinction of work and play; it instead composes a balance based only on priorities without disrupting your routine (because it is your routine). To bring this entry full circle, stop thinking about how you can make the world a better place. Think about how you can make your world a better place. Balance your consumption with your production. When it comes to food, my suggestion would be not to rely on the world to feed you. Prices will only continue to rise (again, because of supply/demand) and it will never improve you or your state of being. Food budgeting is such an overlooked routine, due in part because of the choices that you feel you do not have. My strategy is to treat my cooking as necessary. I keep a daily planner, and the first thing that goes in is my work schedule. The second thing that goes in is my cooking schedule. From there, I fill the gaps with everything else. Planning your days is so simple; but you must be willing to renew your thought process. Stop letting the world make decisions for you. Remember, you are your own person! Everyone is both a consumer and producer but knowing where to balance the two is dependent on your openness to change. I made that change long ago when I started cooking. And I can attest today how it has positively impacted my own life. I am healthier, more in control of my life, less dependent on others, and therefore more productive because I am happier on my own. Additionally, I no longer order breakfast sandwiches from Starbucks, because in thirty minutes I can make six of them. That saves me a lot of money, which adds to my satisfaction. This is the message that I intend to share with you. Give your life the potential it deserves! Take some extra breaths and have a good day. |
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June 2018
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