Sagon Sembur

Oh, how food can be so nostalgic. It takes you to the time and place where your heart is. Is it that romantic or is it just me?
I was born the youngest of seven children and we had a dearest nanny we considered as our second mother. I mean, seriously. I remember everytime she had to go mudik, my sister and me, as the last youngsters under her caretaking- yes, she took care all seven of us since we were newborn babies- my sister and me would cry unstoppably, scream, kick, temper tantrum all the way, didn't wanna let her go, couldn't handle her going away. I still remember the feeling. It was like half of your soul was forcefully taken away from you, hurt and dying. She was wonderful to us. She loved us dearly and genuinely just like her own children, no fakeness, no politics. Unconditionally, just like my Mom did. And she remained our closest "family" until the day she died at a very old age, possibly more than a hundred.

What's Left..

You'd think a plain cookie with a few chocolate chips folded into the mixture would be a simple matter. It's not. It's never difficult to make, just difficult to get right. 

~ Nigella Lawson

These were what I was left with. Three cookies. No more, no less. And even those were already booked by a friend. So basically, I got nothing left. Really. Well, I guess that just sums up how good they really were.

My Up and Coming Hero!

This is the wholewheat chocolate chips cookies I ranted about in the last post. Made it several times by now,  I keep craving for more. I tweaked the recipe to my liking and got me my best fool-proof version of comfort cookies. It is that good I am proud enough to include in my next Idul Fitri selection cookies to sell. It will be my up and coming hero!

About Wholewheat Cookies and A Beautiful Orange Pie

Being a die hard fan of homemade cookies and wholewheat flour, I think I was destined to find this recipe by Betty Crocker. A chocolate chips recipe using full wholewheat flour. I was drooling right away I couldn't wait to try baking it. It was a lazy afternoon today, typical afternoon when we had to stay home due to the unpredictable stormy weather recently. I got butter and wholewheat flour waiting to use up. Got whitesugar-palmsugar-cinnamon mixture leftover from making churros the other day (which by the by, never had the chance to blog about, 'coz it's all gone before even finished cooling, oh my..). Got dark 70% couverture chocolate button, then I baked away.

I halved and tweaked the recipe to my convenience, so mine did not look like the ones in the picture on Betty Crocker's web site. They were mounded more and rather smooth on top than crinkled. But, hell baby, were they so goooood....!

Pepper Lunch. When Fast Food is No Longer Junk Food.

Kamera membidik. Juru masak bergerak cepat *sangat cepat!* menangkupkan nasi ke atas piring lebar. Sebelum sempat saya berpikir, ia sudah meletakkan butter dan mulai menyusun salmon segar di sekeliling nasi. Saya mengatur ulang fokus dan komposisi. Detik berikutnya hidangan sudah jadi dan siap diangkat ke meja tamu.

"Hey.."

Saya hanya bisa melongo memandang satu piring Rice Pepper Salmon sudah terbang menuju ruang makan.

"Berapa detik dibutuhkan untuk menyiapkan satu hidangan ini, pak?" tanya saya separuh putus asa karena masih saja kalah cepat.

"Hmm..," sang juru masak tidak langsung menjawab. Sepertinya ia kesal konsentrasinya saya ganggu dengan pertanyaan.

"Berapa lama?" desak saya tanpa ampun.

"Kira-kira.. 40 detik-an lah."

Bahkan tidak sampai satu menit!

Monkey Bread

It is Bread Week on Natural Cooking Club! Time to put your favorite bread recipe into action, knead and rise, bake and celebrate this humble food ever exists!

I love bread for its everything. Versatility, variety, history, and ultimately the fun of making it. Just like diving, you'll find what you specifically look for. If you seek adventure, you'll find one. Whether in yeasty dough, rustic starter sourdough, or the light soda bread and baking powder biscuit, you'll get a personal different experience you hardly forget. If you seek comfort, making it was like a meditation, and nothing can beat the comfort of home-baked bread coming right out of your own kitchen. If you need to get your creative juice running, endless of possibility was laid out in front of you, creating your own version of bread that adds to the already gigantic global variety. If you seek romantic past time reminiscing, the aroma will take you there, to the time where life was simple and problems were either to make loaves now or later after the strawberries were picked.

I love Monkey Bread. I love how it looks, how fun it is to make and eat, and how the unbeatable sweet cinnamon bursts in your mouth, covers your fingers to lick clean. I even love the name! For this Monkey Bread, I used my favorite Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread. Seriously, you can use any bread recipe you like, even biscuits, which I actually plan to make one with. The "monkey" is the shaping process. You ball the dough, dip it into melted butter, throw it in cinnamon sugar mixture to coat, arrange in a pan. You can add nuts or raisins to the cinnamon, add honey to the melted butter, anything you fancy. You can even fill the ball first before dipping and coating, i'm thinking.. cheese cream?

That's it. When you turn it out of the pan onto a plate, you get a beautiful mounded pull-out breads. 

Shiny, gooey, rustic. There, you get your monkey :)

Sony SLT-A55V: Killer!

Taken by Citra Anggraini Kusuma

What do you expect from a mirrorless camera? I expect smaller and lighter camera, of course, yet reliable to produce near-DSLR quality photos, of course. Not too much to ask, huh?

I was lucky the other day, my friend lent me his Sony SLT-A55V with two lenses: 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 and  50mm f/1.4. I know I always appreciate any camera, how simple it is, how complicated it is. Every camera is special and personal. As if it has its own life and character that communicates and adapts accordingly to its master. But I gotta say I was blown away by this baby.

Disclaimer:
Sony didn't pay me to write this post. Although it will be nice if they did :D
But you can browse on Shopbot to find even newer release of the camera.

The focus is deadly fast and accurate, color is amazing, sharpness and crispness are beyond expectation. I took it to the Food Photography Workshop where Citra, my foodstylist, and I had fun playing with it and produced great food photos. I also took it with me on my diving trip to Tulamben, Bali, as I thought my DSLR would be too bulky to carry.

So these are the photos taken with the camera with no or minimum editing. And by minimum, I mean one or two clicks max on level or color balance.