When I think of yeast, the words : Sea Monkeys, come to mind.

My mom used to keep a jar of dried yeast in our fridge. Having been told the yeasts in there were alive but sleeping, the jar was a constant source of wonder to me. Sometimes when I went to the fridge for some milk or a piece of fruit, I would happen to glance at the jar and pick it up, inspecting it as carefully as I could, almost convincing myself that I could see them moving inside. As I shook the jar, a couple of the light brown specks would stick to the sides of the glass, and these were the ones I imagined were alive, holding on to each other, trying to survive the sudden earthquake.

The illustrations on the front of Sea Monkey product I bought as a kid had me imagining that little yeasts would resemble their aquamarine friends somewhat. A King Yeast and a Queen Yeast with her plump and rosy smile, and their cute little yeasty children. We feed the yeasts and keep them warm, encouraging them to grow, but then we kill them with a blast of heat… which strangely enough, is almost the same way my Sea Monkeys eventually perished. Ah, the humidity!

King and Queen Yeast found their way into the Daring Bakers challenge this month. The objective was to bake a batch of cinnamon or sticky buns from a recipe by Peter Reinhart.

I’ve made similar buns before, but must say, the results from this recipe were pretty impressive. For starters, I loved the silky soft and pliable dough, which was such a pleasure to work with. Then, my favourite bit, which was sprinkling on the filling and rolling up the dough into a log. For fun, I used a fragrant spice mix from Herbies Spices which contained rose petals, poppyseeds and cinnamon, amongst other things. When the buns were pulled out of the oven, they were a gorgeous golden brown, and smelled absolutely divine. Not waiting the relevant minutes after baking and icing, I bit into one as soon as possible, and was rewarded with the taste of sweet, spicy, buttery, tender bread.

Cinnamon Buns :

92g granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
80g unsalted butter
zest of 1 lemon
1 egg
454g bread flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 1/8 – 1 1/4 cup whole milk, at room temperature
1/2 cup cinnamon sugar

1. Cream together the sugar, salt, and butter on medium-high speed in an electric mixer with a paddle attachment. Whip in the egg and lemon extract/zest until smooth. Then add the flour, yeast, and milk. Mix on low speed until the dough forms a ball. Switch to the dough hook and increase the speed to medium, mixing for approximately 10 minutes, or until the dough is silky and supple, tacky but not sticky. You may have to add a little flour or water while mixing to achieve this texture. Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

2. Ferment at room temperature for approximately 2 hours, or until the dough doubles in size.

3. Mist the counter with spray oil and transfer the dough to the counter. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin, lightly dusting the top with flour to keep it from sticking to the pin. Roll it into a rectangle about 2/3 inch thick and 14 inches wide by 12 inches long for larger buns, or 18 inches wide by 9 inches long for smaller buns. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the surface of the dough and roll the dough up into a cigar-shaped log, creating a cinnamon-sugar spiral as you roll. With the seam side down, cut the dough into 8 to 12 pieces each about 1 3/4 inches thick for larger buns, or 12 to 16 pieces each 1 1/4 inch thick for smaller buns.

4. Line a sheet pan with baking parchment. Place the buns approximately 1/2 inch apart so that they aren´t touching but are close to one another.

5. Proof at room temperature for 75 to 90 minutes, or until the pieces have grown into one another and have nearly doubled in size.

6. Preheat the oven to 175°C with the oven rack in the middle shelf. Bake the cinnamon buns for 20 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

8. Cool the buns in the pan for about 10 minutes and then streak white fondant glaze across the tops, while the buns are warm but not too hot. Remove the buns from the pans and place them on a cooling rack. Wait for at least 20 minutes before serving.

White fondant glaze for cinnamon buns :

Sift 4 cups of powdered sugar into a bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon or orange extract and 6 tablespoons to 1/2 cup of warm milk, briskly whisking until all the sugar is dissolved. Add the milk slowly and only as much as is needed to make a thick, smooth paste.

The moment I heard about Apple Day, I knew which recipe I wanted to attempt. There’s a whole section on muffins in this book, all of which look so fabulous that I’ve been slowly trying them out one by one.

I know I’ve been banging on about Mix & Bake quite a bit lately, but it really is a fantastic book. Belinda Jeffery says there’s something Proustian about the aroma of apples and cinnamon baking – I couldn’t agree more. These types of sweets didn’t feature so much while I was growing up in Malaysia, but when my family arrived on Australian shores, my sister and I wanted to eat nothing but fried butterfish and apple pie with ice-cream (and watch cartoons all day long – which made for a very unhealthy combination, now that I think about it!).

These muffins by Belinda truly celebrate everything that is wonderful about apples. The use of apple juice and diced apples in the filling, coupled with generous spicing, generates this burst of apple flavour that escapes like a bang straight from the oven, into your mouth.

Happy Apple Day!

Apple, pecan and cinnamon muffins:
(Note: In her recipe, Belinda uses a crunchy topping for her muffins which I substituted with my usual crumble recipe. I’m including her original here.)

2 eggs
110g brown sugar
125ml light olive oil
125ml apple juice
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups diced apples
160g stone-ground wholemeal plain flour
150g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
90g roasted pecans or walnuts, very coarsely chopped
85g raisins

Crunchy topping:
110g castor sugar
70g roasted pecans, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1. Preheat your oven to 190’C. Generously butter a 12-hole non-stick muffin tin.

2. In a bowl, thoroughly whisk together the eggs, brown sugar, oil, apple juice and vanilla extract. Gently stir in the diced apples.

3. Put both of the flours, the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg into another larger bowl. Whisk all these together for 1 minute with a balloon whisk. Add the pecans and raisins and toss them about so they’re completely coated in the flour mixture.

4. Pour the apple mixture into the flour mixture and stir them together until they’re just combined into a very chunky batter; don’t overdo the mixing or it can make the muffins tough. Divide the batter equally between the muffin holes; they will be very full.

5. For the crunchy topping, mix together all the ingredients. Spinkle the topping evenly over each muffin.

6. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the muffins are puffed up and smell positively mouth-watering and a fine skewer inserted in the middle of one comes out clean. Cool the muffins in the tin on a wire rack for 2 minutes. Carefully ease them out and sit them on the rack to cool. They’re lovely eaten warm either as is, or with butter or ricotta.

Jugemu & Shimbashi

Hang on, this is completely crazy, I say to him. We’re going to be eating our way around Tokyo in a couple of weeks. Why are we in a Japanese restaurant now? He looks over from his steaming bowl of soba noodles and shrugs. Needless to say, B and I are both nuts about Japanese food. Or rather, I’m nuts about Japanese food, and B is just plain nuts. Either way, it ends up being a bit of a win-win situation.

Jugemu & Shimbashi are two restaurants combined – a teppanyaki restaurant and a soba noodle house. It was recommended to me a couple of months ago, when I attended a Kaiseki cooking class in Chatswood, but it’s taken me until now to check the place out. If I remember correctly, she said that the chef at this restaurant used to make the noodles at the highly lauded but now defunct Shimbashi Soba by the Sea.

When you ring to book, they will ask you which section you want to sit in, but in the end it doesn’t really matter unless you want to be right in front of the teppan, because you can order from either menu anyway. And what a sprawling menu it is. From appetisers such as steamed edamame to tempura, karaage, chef’s specials, sushi and sashimi, soba and udon noodles, okonomiyaki and teppanyaki. There is even a brochure at the back of the menu, expounding the virtues of soba and explaining (with diagrams) how to enjoy the noodles. Just like something out of Tampopo (“stroke the pork to show it that you care”). The soba noodles at Jugemu & Shimbashi are made in-house, so you can’t really visit this place without at least trying them once.

B has the Tempura with warm Soba, which doesn’t disappoint. I on the other hand, tried to be a little adventurous and picked the Soba Dumplings, which the waitress kindly warned me were not to everyone’s liking. When it arrived, I could see why. In a bowl was a large lump of greyish dough, the texture of mushy mashed taro. You break off pieces of the dumpling and dip it in a soy dipping sauce, along with a little wasabi and some sliced spring onions, for flavour. It’s comforting, and when the waitress returns later to enquire my opinion about the dish, I tell her in all honesty that I liked it…

..but wouldn’t order it again, as there are plenty more things on the menu that I can’t wait to try out, the next time we return.

Jugemu & Shimbashi
246 Military Rd
Neutral Bay 2089

Masuya

A quick bite to eat after work. Walk down the steps, past the plastic food display, into this basement restaurant with a sushi counter at the far end and tables dotting the spacious floor. Service is very friendly and welcoming. Everyone around us seems to have ordered off the virgin cocktail menu. Mocktails aren’t really my thing. Overpriced fruit juice, if you ask me. Instead I have my eye on the prize : a special of sea urchin tempura with pink salt. It turns out to be a lovely dish you can’t fault, but which in retrospect still doesn’t beat sea urchin served in the simplest but best way – with rice, wasabi and nori. This we later have in the form of a few pieces of sea urchin sushi, which were unfortunately served up too cold to be able to appreciate the natural sweetness of the urchin. A shared sushi platter gets the tick, but it’s decent, rather than remarkable.

Masuya is part of a group who also run the popular Musashi Restaurant and Makoto Sushi Bar. Not a day goes by that there isn’t a big queue outside of the Chatswood branch of Makoto. I’ve eaten there several times and still am not sure what the fuss is all about.

However, some essays written by Mr. Sadamatsu, the Managing Director, feature on their website and are well worth the read as they’re quite entertaining!

Masuya
Basement Level, 12-14 O’Connell Street
Sydney 2000

Aki’s

After a strong start with some great entrees, including a complimentary amuse and a palate cleanser of shotglasses of grapefruit and lemon, we hit a snag when the mains arrive. Two of the dishes are verging on unpalatably salty, but are manageable when eaten with rice. We don’t complain, but decide to let the waiter know as he clears the plates away. He seemed a bit confused or unsure as to what to do, picking up the dish, putting it down, then finally deciding to clear it off the table for good. Nothing more is said. The bill arrives, it gets paid, we leave.

If you find yourself at Aki’s, I would highly recommend their take on salt and pepper squid which was nice and crispy, and strong on the ginger. Also, the spinach leaves in lentil batter, which arrived standing tall, like the sails from a boat moored off the wharf. Who knew spinach leaves could hold so much tasty batter? The shards were smothered in yogurt, date and tamarind, and chilli sauces, and were very moreish, if a bit on the sweet side.

Aki’s Indian Restaurant
1/6 Cowper Wharf Road,
Wooloomooloo 2011

Spice I Am

It’s been awhile between visits to Spice I Am. It turns out, from the discussion around our little round table, that some of us are prone to forgetting to eat. I am not one of these people. In fact, when I don’t eat, I tend to get grumpy.

And so it is that the hungry and the grumpy found themselves a few nights ago, at this hole-in-the-wall Thai eatery that’s perpetually busy. So busy that they have to run like a well-oiled machine or risk collapsing into a hysterial shambles. The military operation kicks in the moment you step up to add your name to the waiting list. In no time at all, you find yourself seated, ordered, watered, fed and out the door again. The machine ensures the bill lands on your table even before the last dish is cleared. It doesn’t allow you to order an extra spring roll (crisp, juicy and packed with flavour) because they are prepared according to portions which can’t be split. You also have to eat as fast as the machine otherwise dishes come flying out of the kitchen that your tiny table doesn’t have space for. So quickly do they manage to manouvre you out that I’ve only managed to have dessert once in this place. I don’t even know if they still serve desserts, but have a fond memory of what I remember as the best Thai dessert I’ve ever had thus far.

The food is good, so you don’t mind the machine. The dish of the evening was a fish curry in banana leaf, which arrived as little banana leaf packages secured by skewers. Inside each was a perfectly spiced portion of fish and curry, heady with coconut and lemongrass, with a tender texture somewhat akin to fish custard. And besides, the machine kind of makes me laugh. Especially when A says her dining group was once told that they had no knife to lend the table in order for a birthday cake to be cut (what, no knife in the entire kitchen?) and that no extra cutlery could be lent to them to eat the cake because all the cutlery was hand-washed and couldn’t be spared.

For superlative Thai food in Sydney, visit Spice I Am, and visit it often. All you need to do is rock up and put yourself in the friendly and capable hands of the machine.

Spice I Am
90 Wentworth Ave
Surry Hills 2010