Happy - and golden - New Year, Tiger!

This day marks the end of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver - a great games for the host country, my motherland - and the end of the period of Chinese New Year celebrations for my family, too.  We have been enjoying both non-stop for 2 weeks now.

Lots of great food, snowy days curled up with NBC, and a side or two of socializing with friends, young and old.  It seems to have been an embarrassment of riches for this mid-winter fortnight:  Olympic, culinary and otherwise.

It has been particularly good this Olympic year to feel like a host of the games even though we live here in Ann Arbor, so very far away from Vancouver.  We have felt connected and - strangely - responsible for the feelings on the festivities.  I am so glad too that it's over and was successful for both of our "home" teams.  Good on you both!

The whole experience has given us reason to celebrate.  And there was much feasting today - and no cooking involved for me.  Just watching some hockey, on the edge of my seat, and soaking up the skin-of-their-teeth golden moment for Team Canada.  Sorry all-around to our friends here, but not winning gold in hockey would have been so devastating for Canadians - a real blow to the collective, national psyche.  Team USA played so well - I thought they deserved the gold but the score just happened to say otherwise today.  Certainly, their goalie deserved the tournament mvp.  He was impressive.  But I am happy for the country, for family, friends and everyone across the border that it was won by Canada on home ice.  It was a Hollywood (North) ending.  But enough of hockey...  They will be talking about this for a generation, eh?!


Earlier in the Year of the Tiger celebrations, I made some celebratory dinner for my family.  By "made", I mean that I boiled up noodles with stir fried ginger beef, steamed and pan-fried dumplings, and quickly sauteed some Chinese greens with garlic, pictured left.  A lot of it I didn't actually "make" at all but rather "heated up".  The bamboo steamers are great for that.  The yu choy cooks very quickly up in the wok - rinsed and salted - in a little canola oil with fragrant garlic cooked quickly first.

The yu choy tips are a family favorite - fresh, healthy, tasty.  I get them as Huaxing Asia Market in Ypsilanti.  Inexpensive, at $1.99/lb - I L-O-V-E them for that too!  Easy to cook this meal, with only the back two burners being used.  One wok, one large pot of water and my bamboo steamers.  I get the shrimp dumplings we love from Trader Joe's and the frozen pork buns from the Huaxing Asia Market as well.  The pork buns are steamed.  The dumplings are done in the wok first with a touch of oil, then a splash of water added and a lid placed on it so it can steam.  They get perfectly crispy on the bottom.  Yum yum!

All the girl friends and mums celebrated earlier this week with a dim sum lunch midweek at Great Lake Seafood Restaurant.  Thanks to our friends Amy and Alyssa for organizing that with friends, old and some new.  Even my little girl got to tag along with the teenagers...   Much thanks to the big girls for letting her crash.

We closed out today with a trip to Great Lake for dim sum - again.  Oh, yeah!  With the tax refund in the bank account and these Vancouver Games a roaring success in our eyes, we were out to truly relax and celebrate before an afternoon of skating at Vets Park Arena for half of us and workouts at Planet Fitness for the other.

Ohh...  The treats!  Calamari:  so sweet, so tender, so worth it.  I never eat deep-fried food but this was like candy - deep-fried-seafood-candy!
The egg tarts and the sweet glazed barbeque pork buns are my girls favorites, too.  Each only available on the weekends.  Take a look at the weekend-only cart they wheel around covered in baked Chinese goodies, pictured further above.  Well worth this Olympic weekend trip with my family.

But soon it will be over.  The Olympic Closing Ceremonies are about to get rolling.  Tomorrow, it's back-to-school for the kids and a tough new exercise routine for me.  Today at Planet Fitness, I began Day One of 10 Days To Shake My World.  I need to run 5k minimum, up to 5 miles maximum for 10 days straight.  I was inspired by all those folks in Vancouver.  Wish me luck - Golden-Olympic-Tiger luck!

Pulla recipe - so good, so simple, so inexpensive to make

I started doing some baking the other day. Serial baking is a better way to describe it, to help fight the winter blues.  

I was in search of more than just an everyday, ordinary carb-high. Chips would NOT do. I wanted memories and meaning and depth. So, I pulled out an old recipe and baked a favorite bread from my childhood. Pulla : sometimes known as Finn bun or Finnish coffee bread.  

It's braided, infused with cardamom, and looks as good as it tastes. You can decorate it - like I did for Valentine's Day - and shape it however you like. It's a great, forgiving dough to work with.  

I just cut this batch of dough in half after making the 3 dough snakes - giving me 6 shorter snakes - shaped them into two separate round braids, and put them in cake pans lined with parchment. It was a whole new look. There was an extra feel-good bonus to it too. It produced one bread to keep and one to give away. Sharing is good medicine for the blue soul in winter, too. Even better than carbs.

Ooo, and one final hybrid idea for this recipe. This dough makes an incredible cinnamon roll base too! Check it out...  

Bread is inexpensive when you make it yourself and stock the ingredients in your fridge (like a jar of yeast, butter, milk, eggs) and pantry (bread flour, sugar, decorator sugars, and ground or whole spices like cinnamon and cardamom from East-Indian markets like Bombay Grocers in Ann Arbor). If you've never made bread before, give this one a try and invite your kids along for your baking adventure.

Ann's Favorite Pulla Recipe- from a fellow Northern Ontario Finn  

In a large mixing bowl, combine these dry ingredients.  

1 Tablespoon or 1 pkg of Quick Rise/Rapid Rise/Bread Machine yeast, like the one I stock, shown here
1/2 cup sugar 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
4 1/2 cups bread flour - set aside another cup of flour as well for working the dough 
1 teaspoon of ground cardamom

Mix to spread the spice throughout. Set aside.

In a smaller bowl, combine these wet ingredients. These need to be warm to activate the yeast. Too cool, the yeast won't work. Too hot, the yeast will be killed.  

1/4 cup warm water 
1 1/3 cup warm milk 
1 egg, lightly beaten (best at room temperature so it doesn't cool off your other liquids)  

Mix lightly.  

Make a well in the center of the large bowl of dry ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients in and mix with a wide wooden spoor or spatula until the wet and dry ingredients are combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl as you go. It should begin to get tough to mix with the spoon.  

With clean hands (rings off, please) continue to mix the dough as it begins to separate from the side of the bowl. Add some of the reserved flour as needed, a Tablespoon at a time to achieve this.  

Now add the final ingredient.  

1/3 cup softened butter.  

This will be greasy and sticky at first but you will feel this dough start to come together as you work it in your hands, squeezing it to spread the butter throughout.  

Knead - a process of folding over the dough and pushing with the heel of your hand - the dough. Knead it well enough to spread the butter well and work the dough so it no longer feels sticky, gluey, or greasy. Add a bit of flour as needed to get the feel of a smooth, elastic dough which easily forms a ball in the center of bowl, fully separated from the sides.  

There are great tips on kneading in cookbooks and on-line but the best way to know how this works is to get your hands in there and do it. Get the feel of the dough as it changes. I posted a short video of my one-handed kneading of this dough so you can see the look of the dough as it gets to that last stage where it's ready to be set aside to rise. View it on my annarbor.com blog.

Cover the bowl with a dish towel or other clean cloth. Set in a warm, draft-free area and let it rise for just 10 minutes. Lightly spread flour on a clean surface - a large bread board, butcher block, table or counter top will do. Remove the dough from the bowl and, with a sharp knife, cut the dough into three equal parts. This doesn't have to be perfect division. More or less is good enough.  

Roll these dough segments into long snakes of dough of approximately equal length. I do this on my kitchen counter top. Kids LOVE doing this with you so feel free to put them to work with their clean, little hands. They are naturals, likely having made play-doh snakes since before they could use complete sentences.  

With three long snakes of dough, approximately 1 and a half inches thick and nearly two feet long, now it's time to braid them. Alternating side, crossing one outside piece over the inside piece of dough, braid them until you get to the end. Gather the ends together and pinch the dough to a sealed end, tucking it under. Go back to the top and braid this starting point backwards - outside under inside - and pinch this end closed in the same way.  

Lay this long braid, centered to fit, on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Completely cover with that tea towel or cloth again, set in a warm place and let it rise until it is nearly doubled in size. This will take 45 minutes to an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. When the bread has finished rising, remove the cover and place it on the center rack in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes. While it bakes, combine 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice with 1 Tablespoon of sugar. Stir and set aside. I like to put it in a heavy glass bowl or mug and leave it on top of the stove. It melts and combines to a nice syrup. When the bread is done, it should be golden top.

Remove from the oven to a wire rack to cool. Immediately brush the top with the sugar/lemon glaze. It will sizzle as you brush it. The sound - along with the sight and smell of this fresh baked bread - is hard to resist. But resist it! This bread needs to sit until it is at least cool enough to handle. Cutting it or pulling it apart too early will release a rush of steam, especially dangerous to your junior bakers. Be warned...

Enjoy it warm - not hot - from the oven plain. So good! Or cooled, sliced with just butter. It's so delightful!

Try it out. I will post the Bread Maker version too... Gotta run a girl to swimming now.