Blog Archives

Halvah

Halva is on of my favorite deserts. Not only because it is simple to make, but mainly because in my eyes it is just a canvas where you can play with the spices and the flavorings you want. Traditionally this is known to be a Greek desert, however, I now that a similar variation is encountered in Turkey and in India. I will highlight the differences later on the post, but for now let me tell you more about the desert. It was originated somewhere in the middle east, most likely to the region close to India. The basic ingredients are, fat, starch and sugar. We start with the fat that will be the carrier of the flavors and intensify the sweet taste. The starch will provide the main body and structure of the desert. The sugar... Well that you can guess. The only other basic ingredient required here is a water based ingredient that will cook everything.

Read More

Eggplant Quest

Summer is here... And all that comes with summer. Warm weather, heat waves, ice creams... and eggplants. Yeah I said eggplants. You know it is a vegetable that you can find year around, but the price, the quality and the taste are so much better during the hot summer weather. It is a vegetable, or to be precise a fruit, that is very popular around the Mediterranean, specially in Greece, Turkey, Italy and Egypt. Yes I said a fruit. Technically a fruit, in botany, is the ripened ovary—together with seeds—of a flowering plant. And that is exactly what eggplant is.

Read More

Taking a Break

Well I have no time to cook and just putting here recipes with no moral to be learnt is pointless. There are millions of recipes on the web. Look there. Here we try to see cooking from the bottom up and not from the top down. We start with the understanding of the fundamentals and build on them. So I will take officially sometime of and I will return with more experiences.

Enjoy a hot cup of coffee (or more) the mean time!

Read More

Sweet Taste Of Success

The final chapter of the cinnamon rolls project was yet to happen. On Saturday night I tried it again. I started as before, but this time I fall asleep so I let the dough rise for over night. But regardless that all the rest were exactly as before. And this time it was successful. Actually I made some critical changes too. For the icing instead of the confectioners sugar, I grind down my own in a regular blender. The simple confectioners sugar comes with some cornstarch that since it remains uncooked gives a slight uncooked starch taste.

Read More

Coffee: After the Brew

Yes when I start with a topic I continue until I exhausts it. That s what I am doing with coffee. Not really I just always wanted to know how coffee effects humans. It is different from human to human and I always wanted to know the source of this deviation. Well as you probably most know the major reason is the molecule of 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione, or also known as caffeine. The chemical formula is C8H10N4O2 or and the molecular weight is 194.19 g/mol. So what is so important about caffeine? Why consumption can be so drastic on us.

Read More

Coffee: The Brew

In the previous (very long post) we talked about coffee history and chemistry. I think now we all deserve a warm soothing cup of coffee. Well some of you probably not, but I sure do. Making coffee might involved some simple steps but they are sure tricky and need helpful plans. I enjoy different kinds of coffee: espresso, greek (turkish), drip and frappe. But the most widely consumed by me and by most coffee drinkers is definitely the drip coffee. So that s what I am going to talk about. Drip coffee that is then...

Read More

Disaster: The aftermath

Well I have been puzzling myself all day (and last night for that matter) for what lead to the disaster. But before I start the “assay” of my conclusion I will need to explain why I am so upset. See at the place I went I have the nickname chef. Not that I am a true one, but I am sure a wannabe. There are therefore at least for me certain standards my food has to reach, to be considered successful. However many times I do not succeed and that ‘s fine with me. I just try to trace the reason for the failure and try next time to change the proportions of the ingredients, the baking method and any other minor adjustment to fix the recipe.

Read More

Cinnamon Rolls

Yesterday I was invited to a desert party for Valentine’s day. It was desert so I assumed (wrongfully as it was proofed) that the main thing will be chocolate, since there is all this philosophy about chocolate and love and yada, yada. Instead of repeating the same pattern I decided to make something different. I made (as you can tell from the picture) cinnamon rolls. There are a couple of reasons for that: 1) I love cinnamon (I dedicated a whole blog entry on that) and 2) there is something about the aroma of yeast that makes homes really smell like homes, nice and cozy. Good cinnamon rolls, however, although simple to make, for sure require time and careful steps. They can go from puffed to flat in matter of minutes. None of the steps requires any super talent or any excellence or even any skill for that matter. All of them though, require religious attention to the execution.

Read More

Coffee: Before The Brew

How many have you heard the expressions "I need coffee" or "coffee break"? Coffee Is the driving force for many people to leave their bed and start their day. The past few centuries and especially the last few decades, coffee became one of the most important components of the everyday breakfast. Coffee shops are everywhere and many of the are among the gourmet stores, making coffee one of the most popular beverages on earth. A simple looking beverage, but with science much more complicated than ever imagined.

Read More

Cinnamon

One of the most recognizable aromas is cinnamon. If you think of it is the only spice with pepper that has food named out of it, cinnamon rolls, Cinnamon Toast Crunch (cereals by General Mils), cinnamon swirl cake, apple cinnamon cake and so on... It is the only spice that has its aroma extracted and commercialized for room fragrant. It is also a spice that is very closely bonded to holidays. How many can imagine Christmas and Thanksgiving without cinnamon? Not many... I know. Not to mention all this cinnamon flavored gums. But have you ever wondered what makes cinnamon... well cinnamon? Before we get started with hard science stuff let 's see where cinnamon is coming from. Well cinnamon is native to Sri Lanka and the best cinnamon is still produced there. However the first reference to cinnamon was in the ancient China. A big difference between cinnamon and other spices that in cinnamon the flavor is not coming from the seed of a plant, but thin layers shaved of the bark of a small laurel-like tree; the (what else) cinnamon tree. The shaves are usually rolled to quills. There are two types of cinnamon you can find, the actual bark (actual skin) and thin layers that come out of the branch after the skin has been removed (picture above).

Read More