Grissini

I've got another craving food here, Grisini. It's also named as "breadsticks". Other than granola, biscotti, nutty french balls, I've got this adding into my craving container recently. It could be made by different kind of flavours such as nuts, cheese, seeds, chocolate etc. I used sesame and parmesan cheese for my first attempt on this grissini. The recipe extracted from "孟老师的100道面包".

Mixture (A)
Bread flour 150g
Plain flour 50g
Sugar 15g
salt 1/2 teaspoon
water 100g
instant yeast 1/4 teaspoon (1g)
Parmesan cheese powder 20g
Mixture (B)
Unsalted butter 15g

Egg whites 20g
White seasame 1 tablespoon
Black sesame 1 tablespoon

1. Mix all the mixture (A) in a mixing bowl with a dough hook at low spead then medium speed until everything well combine and become a smooth dough.
2. Add in unsalted butter continue kneading with a low spead until the butter mix with the dough then change to medium speed until it become a very smooth and elastic dough.
3. Proof it in a large bowl cover with cling wrap for 50 minutes.
4. Roll the dough out at 0.3 cm thick in rectangular shape. Brush egg whites on the roll out dough and sprinkle with sesame. Use the hand to gently press the sesame to stick at the dough.
5. Using a roller cutter to cut longish shape at 1cm thick then twist it with your hand by holding each side of the end of the dough.
6. Place on a baking tray and bake for about 15 - 20 minutes at 150'C until it golden brown color.

Badam Kheer - Foolproof method

Making badam kheer doesn't have to be a tedious process. I made it in 10 minutes. I also made sure that it is low in fat. This and green mung sundal are my offerings to goddess Saraswathi today.

Serves:2

Ingredients:
Almonds-1/3 cup
Evaporated milk-1 cup
Low fat(2%) milk-1 to 1.5 cups
Cardamom-a pinch
Saffron- a few strands
Sugar- as needed(I added about 2.5 tbsp :)) or condensed milk
Method:
Soak almonds in hot water for 20 minutes and peel the skin.
Grind almonds with little water to make a thick paste.
In a deep vessel, add 1/4 cup of milk and ground paste and simmer it for 5 minutes until raw smell of the paste goes off. Now add evaporated milk, saffron, cardamom, rest of the milk, sugar and simmer for another 5 to 8 minutes.

This is my entry to JFI Festival treats hosted by Srivalli.

kitchen planning

The initial excitement we had that the contractor's were finished has passed and it's time to get back to work. We took a little break and I've been under the weather. We have been tinkering around with a few small projects and repairs, but mostly we've been getting more serious about the kitchen plan.

There are obviously many ways to think about how you want your kitchen to function and look. We like the fact that we were truly starting with a blank slate. I can imagine that if plumbing and electrical was already in kitchen-shape that we would constrain our plan to fit. We found that the easiest way to think about it was to draw a scale floor plan and cut out scale models of the cabinetry options. It was a bit tedious at first, but definitely an exercise worth doing.

We then taped out the layout on the floor to see how it feels walking through the room - it's looking good.

For cabinetry we decided on Ikea Akurum cabinets. There are many opinions on Ikea and their durability. If you do some research you'll find that an overwhelming majority feel that you can't beat them for the price. Of course, custom cabinetry - or other high-quality cabinetry - would be great, but saving money is important right now. We also had Ikea cabinets in our previous house and they were pretty great. Never had problems, cleaned up nicely and adjustable enough to fit everything we have. This color is Adel Medium Brown:

Ikea also has a nice kitchen planner tool that you can use to help decide layout decisions. While it's a nice tool, I found it easier to do the paper cutouts and then translating that into the program. It does create some nicer looking pictures of what we want:

The column will be there at the end of the "L". View from above:

There is actually more counter space than Ikea's planner allows, but this give you an idea.
Speaking of countertops... we've decided on Silestone. This is made from quartz and apparently harder and more stain resistant than Granite and other choices. It's also really beautiful. We are going with a dark, almost black color. This is called Stellar Night:

As for the flooring, we want to do something natural looking - and we're leaning toward slate options. We like something like this:

The backsplash has only been vaguely talked about, I like the idea of having a solid, slightly earthy green:

or;


In other news, we started getting a more serious supply list for the framing and drywall work we are about to start. Hopefully we can go this coming weekend and pick it all up - that'll keep us busy for a while. I did find out today that the exposed joists in the living room are remarkably level! We expected to have quite a bit of leveling and shim'work to even things out - but apparently the folks who built this house 200 year ago weren't messing around - thanks, dead guys.

I hope you were as meticulous in the master bedroom...