living like a local: this and that

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

this and that

For Christmas my sissy Sarah gave me a wonderful cookbook, full of photos and delectable recipes and I finally FINALLY made something from it last night - no not soup not samosas not salad not salsa or chutney or burgers or risotto but... CINNAMON BUNS. Yes, seriously. It's not often that I bake anything that involves yeast, rising, waiting or patience, and anything that takes over an hour to make usually gets shot down. However, I combined errands and a swim with punching and kneading and waiting for the rising, and there you go. AND... they turned out perfectly. PERFECTLY! I always wonder with those first time semi-complicated recipes... but it worked. And here is the ultimate test of will power, which we both failed miserably. Round one of sticky sugary buns comes out of the oven, and since it's after dinner and we've both burned enough calories to deserve at least one, we both eat two. And then... an hour later, out comes a fresh batch of golden, glisteny, perfect looking sugar and cinammon-glazed pieces of perfection, with goo and sugar and yumminess brimming over the sides of our one and only pan-fit-for-the-oven. Are we supposed to resist and NOT eat three cinnamon buns? HOW? Impossible. C'est impossible! We ate three. And then had more this morning, with coffee. Delicious. Care of Whitewater Cooks, voila, le recipe....

1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 1/8 cup warm water
2 tbsp active dry yeast
5-6 cups flour
4 tbsp butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, wait for 5 mins. Cream together butter, 2/3 cup brown sugar, salt, eggs (one at a time), and then milk, yeast mixture and flour, 1 cup at a time. Add enough flour to make a soft dough, and knead until smooth and springy - about 10 minutes. Place in a large greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size, 45 minutes+. Punch down, roll out, brush with melted butter, and sprinkle sugar and cinnamon alllll over. Roll it up into a cinny-roll-log, and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Place in greased pan, let rise again for about 45 mins and then bake at 350degrees for another 45 minutes. In round two of the cinnies, I melted some more butter in the bottom of the pan and added some sugs and cinnamon - it made them more gooey and increased the yumminess factor (very scientific).

Steve's team struggled again this weekend, and unfortunately, came home without any wins. This coming weekend they are heading to Kyoto to try their luck again, and then play in Machida and Tokyo the following two weekends. They are working SO hard, and always come so close - an extremely high percentage of their sets are lost by just two points, so at least they are in a position to take some games. It would be much worse if they were being blown out... right? One piece of nice vball news is that he (Steve) has the highest attack efficiency in the league - great news! But I'm sure he'd rather have some more wins under the team belt.

On Sunday Nao and I bought soup to-go from Soup Stock, a popular chain restaurant, and had lunch in Arisugawa Park in Hiroo. It's a gorgeous park - very Japanese-y, with bridges and ponds, pools and waterfalls, rock steps and stairs and walls, and full of flora and fauna of all types. It was a nice day, and besides being somewhat harassed by some disgusting pigeons (I HATE pigeons), it was lovely. After, we headed to what is now the former French Embassy to check out an exhibition called No Man's Land. The embassy has moved (or is moving?) across the street to a new building, and the former grounds and buildings were opened up to a group of (mostly) French and Japanese artists - all of the rooms, walls, gardens etc. were either full of art or altered to become art themselves, and it was something. Not something either of us overly enjoyed... but it was interesting. I just don't get much modern art. What is so artistic about a messy room? Or a room full of (seemingly) random junk?