Adventures in Artisan Bread Baking

In my boredom, I am starting to dabble in baking my own bread (and re-invigorating this blog). Not the "put all ingredients in a bread machine and let it rise" baking but actually cultivating my own yeast culture, kneading the dough by hand, letting it rise, and pulling out a perfect sourdough bread form the oven. The inspiration for bread baking came two weeks ago when I was watching Top Chef Seattle. The elimination challenge was to make the quintessential Alaskan cuisine: sourdough bread and salmon. The next day, I went to King Arthur Flour and ordered my 200+ year starter culture, with delusions of freshly baked grandeur. I also ordered a dough cutter and a danish dough whisk (made in Poland).

Pantagruel after it's been fed

Pantagruel's crock home, manufactured and bred by King Arthur Flour

I made a basic sourdough bread last week, but today was the first day when I had to really "feed" Pantagruel. Yes, I named my starter. Weekly feeding requires discarding a cup of the culture, and replacing it with a cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water (50% hydration). I didn't want to just throw away a cup of Pantagruel...so I decided to make a batch of caramelized onion, chive, and cheddar biscuits. I made some alterations, like adding a large handful of shredded cheddar cheese. Yes, it tastes as wonderful as it sounds! In addition, since my family devoured the bread that I baked last week, I decided to make more loaves for this week.

Caramelized onion, chive, and cheddar biscuits...YUM!

Last week, I used bread flour, and the sourdough came out with a perfect crusty crust and spongy bread-y inside. Since I was pursuing a "healthier" version, I used whole wheat flour this time around.

Loaf and rolls before going in the oven

Result: Fail. It's hard and dense as a cannon ball. I'll have to try again for Pantagruel's feeding next week. Maybe a 1/2 bread flour and 1/2 whole wheat flour combination. Until that time, does anyone have use for a freshly baked cannon ball?

Maybe Kim Jung Un might have use for this, perhaps?

Dog Days of Summer

August 7, according to the Korean Farmer's Almanac, was the end of the Dog Days of Summer. It was a pretty hot summer in Korea, as everyone keeps on telling me, but I'm sure not as oppressive as the record breaking heat that everyone in the States have gone through. To mark the end of the oppressive summer heat, the Korean tradition is to eat a hot lean stew, like samgaetang (chicken ginseng soup) or bosintang (puppy stew). Yes, no joke. Some of the Koreans weren't happy with that and decided to lock themselves up in a cage.  I love that picture of the dog just chillin like he's not going to be someone's dinner tonight.

I know, I know, I'm very behind on the blog updates. Lot of things have been consuming my time.  But starting next weekend, I will be able to add some overdue articles, since I'm coming back to the U.S.!!!  I told work that I need a break and that I will be back after Labor Day when flights get cheaper. And they bought my story but I still have to keep an eye on my projects. Anyways, I can't wait to indulge in some Chipotle, crab cakes, peking duck, $10 pinot grigio bottles, and mom's cooking. I've actually become exponentially more productive after buying my plane ticket. English speakers, I can't wait to catch up with you guys!

Drought and Typhoon

Korea went through a two month drought in May and June, and finally the heavens poured open on the last day in June.  It's been raining every other day since then.

So I thought nothing of it when I looked at my Weather Channel app and saw heavy rains in the forecast, until my friend messaged me and told me that a typhoon was forecasted to hit Seoul today.  I get 'typhoon' and 'monsoon' mixed up, so just groaned thinking that the rain would never stop.  Then I Google News-ed 'korea typhoon' to get an estimate of how long the rain was going to last, and found out that typhoon was the regional equivalent of 'hurricane.'  It had a cute name: Typhoon Khanun.

Now hurricanes I am familiar with, especially after all the coverage from Hurricane Katrina and working on post-Katrina regulations.  The Koreans were freaking out and the U.S. Embassy even sent out an alert yesterday.  I immediately went to the store and bought some bottled waters and used this opportunity to try out some of the canned Korean food.  Yes, of course I also bought Spam!  The eye of the storm was supposed to hit early this morning, and it was...forgettable.  I just heard a lot of rain overnight (it helped me fall asleep) and there was no evident damage, except for the usual bad drivers during the morning commute.  Let's just say that people freaked out more about a 50 mph decreasing storm than a North Korean test rocket launch.  Me thinks that we have conflicting prorities.

Speaking of derecho and hurricanes, I attended the 1st Annual International Disaster Management Conference in Seoul.  Kind of like the World IT Show, the attendees were 99% Korean.

They had a German govie talk about his country's emergency management methods, and a Korean professor from Texas A&M who did a presentation on "System & Plan on Disaster Management Policy in the United States."  I thought it was pretty comprehensive and thorough EXCEPT for when he mentioned NIMS and said that it is used for mutual aid and assistance agreements.  Oh l'horreur!  The Koreans in attendance were only interested in the pictures from Hurricane Katrina where the civilians were protecting their property.  They were very perplexed that civilians were allowed to have guns.

They live in a densely populated penninsula (more like an island since they can't directly access Asia because of North Korea) and don't understand the concept that in the U.S., people live miles apart from each other in parts of the country and a man's got to protect his family.

Speaking of disasters, I spent an hour trying to order pizza for the office this evening.  I first was on the Pizza Hut Korea website and the payment system was such a disaster that I couldn't get them to process my order.  The problem is that the optimum browser for Korean websites is Internet Explorer.  Need I say more?  So I called the local Pizza Hut to take the order, but they said that they only accepted orders from the official delivery hotline.  So I called the official delivery hotline to take my order, but they said that they couldn't give internet discounts.  When I told them that the internet ordering wasn't working, I had to call the Pizza Hut Online Customer Service line.  She couldn't walk me through the payment option, so I lost my cool and said, "I just want to order a damn pizza!  Are you trying to run a business?  Why won't you just let me order and pay for a damn pizza?"  I think the lady got it, and she processed my order, discount and all.  But Jess, how was the pizza?  Damn delicious! How can something called "Cheesy Bites Cheese King Pizza" ever be disappointing?

China Part III - Wuxi

It looks like whenever I finally do make the move to China, I will settle in Wuxi, located 1.5 hours west of Shanghai.  Wuxi took my breath away because it's how I imagine California was during the gold rush.  Wuxi is receiving 1/5 of all Smart City investments made in China, and in case you can't understand that, it means that billions and billions of dollars are going into just ONE city every year.  Jiangsu Province, where Wuxi is located, is receiving 1/3 of all Smart City investments in China (almost $20 billion), so there's a lot of buzz.  It was pretty evident by looking at the Wuxi skyline--all I could see were cranes and new buildings going up.

The interesting thing about China is that every secondary city (i.e., any city that is not Beijing, Shanghai, or Hong Kong) have set aside an "Economic and Technological Development Zone."  These Development Zones encourage foreign direct investment and are a separate district adjacent to the main city.  I love visiting these Development Zones because the city governments applied every textbook lessons learned from urban transportation problems by implementing green areas, 10-lane roads, solar street lamps, etc. to an area where they anticipate enormous growth.  I have removed all thoughts of associating China with "slum,"  "shady building material," and the negative connotation of "Made in China."  The highway system (especially in Jiangsu Province) rival the U.S. roads, and even more so because all road signs are in both Mandarin and English.

Side note: Although the highway system is pretty impressive, I will take a shady U.S. rest stop in the middle of the night over a Chinese one in daylight. And don't worry, even if they have a great highway system, the driving is still terrible.

After a day of meetings, I had some free time to explore Lake Tai, the third largest freshwater lake in China.  The park surrounding Lake Tai was beautiful and scenic, and I took a ferry to Sanshan Island located in the middle of the lake.  It was 36 degrees Centigrade that day (almost 97 degrees F), sunny, and humid, so I was silently melting on the top deck while spreading my arms out to get a tan.  Apparently, that just made me look more like a foreigner to the other passengers on the boat, because they were covered from head to toe in order to NOT get a tan.  I've never seen so many people use umbrellas as sun parasols in my life.

Heading to Sanshan Island

Things that would not fly in the U.S. #56: sun parasols

While in Wuxi, I was able to experience some of the local delicacies like:

• White Taihu shrimp - It is one of the "Three Whites."  Probably no more than an inch in length, the shrimp is one of the three treasures of Lake Tai. (Taihu literally means "Lake Tai" in Chinese).  I didn't eat the head or the tail, but did eat the shell.  It tasted like fatness and tenderness.

• Oil gluten - I know, it sounds disgusting.  It's actually a vegetable protein used to make a dough, then all the starch and other impurities are washed off, leaving just gluten.  Then it's shred into little bite-sized pieces, and fried in hot oil and smothered in brown sauce.  Okay, I admit, it wasn't my favorite dish.
• Spareribs - Pork ribs are cooked in cinnamon, anise, garlic, sugar, and ginger until the meat can be easily separated from the meat.  Need I say more?
• White Taihu fish - The fish is steamed and then topped with a light broth and a mixture of fresh scallions and ginger strips.  It was so fresh, tender, and delicious. (It's actually just one fish on the plate.  The chef just splits the fish laterally in such a way that it looks like there's two whole fish on the plate.)

• Xiaolongbao - In America, we call these Shanghai soup dumplings.  Although I didn't eat it in Shanghai, I was close enough to Shanghai that these were a local delicacy.  It was good, but I would have liked the ginger soy sauce to accompany the dumplings.

I don't really know what the third treasure of Lake Tai is.  Crawfish maybe, because I have a fuzzy memory of eating that before the baijiu kicked in.

Baijiu - Oh so pretty and oh so potent

World IT Show

About a month ago, I went to the World IT Show at the huge convention center, COEX.  

First of all, the name "World IT Show" was misleading because 98% of the companies present were Korean companies.  It's like Major League Baseball calling their championship games the World Series because one of the team that is able to participate is from outside the U.S.  If Montreal still had an MLB team, I would be fine with calling it the World Series because French Canadians are a different breed, but I consider Toronto and any city in Ontario to be part of the U.S., eh.

Anyways, I digress.  I have observed that Korean trade shows are funny because they open the show floor up to anyone, and not just qualified attendees/buyers.  As long as they are willing to pay 5,000 won (~$5), come right in!  It just so happened that the day that I went, every teen that lives in Seoul decided to descend on the IT show to play with the new emerging technologies.  I must've been Robespierre in my past life to be cursed with such an experience of being surrounded by a sea of pubescent teens that day.

Three halls were displaying products for the IT show.  The first two halls that I visited were pretty boring, but quickly became enjoyable because there were no teens here.  It turns out that they were all in the final hall where LG, Samsung, SK Telecomm, etc. dominated with their huge interactive displays.  It looked like they each easily spent over $1million on their interactive areas.  One of the highlights for this show was the launch of smart TVs, including LG's and Samsung's.

One of the interesting/amusing things I learnedfrom this show was the launch of Diablo 3.  I've never even heard of Diablo 1 or 2, but it's another one of Blizzard Entertainment's popular online game that Asian people obsess about.  Apparently, it launched the same week that the World IT Show was happening, so the company was giving out free tickets to to visitors to play the game for an hour at a nearby PC 'bang' (PC room).

The second amusing thing I learned is that there's a cult group of amateur photographers who show up to any show at the COEX to take pictures of the display girls.  Yeah, like equivalent to WWE girls or the Dallas Cheerleaders.  These amateur photographers spent thousands of dollars on high end DLSRs just to take pictures of certain display girls.  Papa-paparazzi.

Taxicab Dialogues (Part V) - Taxi Drivers on Strike

I hope everyone recovered from the aftermath of the storm that hit the mid-Atlantic.  I can't imagine what you guys are going through--100+ degree days and no electricity.  I'm following the news since my parents lost power and were living in the comforts of the cool basement for the past couple of days.  Thankfully, Pepco got electricity to them Sunday evening and I heard little Cleo was conserving her energy by not acting like a crazy dog for two days.

The Korean taxi drivers went on strike for a day on June 20, so it was Wear Walking Shoes Day.  The cab drivers had a list of grievances that Bloomberg covered, so I won't be repetitive here.  Thankfully, the Seoul Metro added more trains and increased the frequency, so the subway wasn't as crowded during the morning commute.  But I met some people up for dinner, so when I was on the subway at 11pm, it was crowded and I wanted to puke from the stench of all the drunk people.  Ewwww.

Actually, I didn't even know the cab drivers were going to be on strike.  I haven't really been following the Korean news, and it just so happened that I was cabbing back home the day before.  I was starving so was eating some White Cheddar Cheez-Its (not readily available to Koreans) and offered the driver some. He thanked me, and then I guess he was feeling guilty, so asked if I knew that the cabbies were going to be on strike the next day.  I told him I wasn't aware of anything, so he explained that almost all the Korean cab drivers were not going to be on the road.  But he said that he owns his taxi instead of being part of a company, so he gave me his card and said if I needed a cab the next day, he would come pick me up.  And it all started with Cheez-Its, which I think should now be called Friendship Cracker or UN Biscuit.  (I also noticed that salt and vinegar chips have the same effect.)

Speaking of foreign food, I moved into a new place in the Itaewon neighborhood over the weekend. The foreign market that I frequent is within a three minute walk, and I have access to different types of international food (even Uzbekistan and Egyptian cuisine) and street kebabs, all within walking distance. I'm closer to work and it'll save me a lot on taxi that I used to spend to go to Itaewon, my weekend playground. Win-win!

Missing in Action (Part II) - KJI's childhood

Sorry again that I haven't been posting anything lately.  I'm in between a trip to China, hosting Chinese officials in Korea, and moving to a new place in Seoul, so a *bit* overwhelmed.  I promise I will write some new blog articles about Wuxi, China (exciting!), a commentary on Chinese drivers (so bad that I was laughing everytime I was in a car), and a new Taxicab Dialogues - Drivers on strike edition.

I do have an interesting story to share.  I was at a luncheon a couple of weeks ago, and sat next to a professor who used to ride tricycles with Kim Jong Il in Pyeongyang before the Korea War started.  Alas, KJI was pulled from school because his daddy had to go answer to his Soviet puppet masters and there was this penninsular war that he was trying to start.  Well, you know I'm interesting in anything about KJI (especially him looking at things), so I obviously asked if KJI was "ronery," but nobody in the table laughed.  C'mon people, where's your sense of humor?  The correct response is obviously "...so ronery."