Full English Food Rock Buns

Oh my goodness, these cookies (or biscuits) were amazing. My Austin to Boston swap package included a package of Rock Buns from Full English in Austin. We're thinking of moving to Austin now.

Rachel wrote about these treats better than I could:

"These rock buns are sort of a marriage of scones and shortbread with currants thrown in. Very dense, crumbly yet a little chewy, perfect for morning coffee, afternoon tea, an after-school snack, midnight cravings, I can’t think of a time when I wouldn't want to eat them."

She has been trying to recreate the recipe with limited success. Her latest recipe is in the article. I'd say the thing that characterized the buns for us was the crispy, buttery sugar nibbles. Gail and I think a way to get this might be to add sugar to the bottom of the muffin tin before adding the dough. We'll have to try it.

Mesquite Olive Oil from Texas Olive Ranch

As soon as I scoured through my Austin to Boston swap package, I knew I had to run out and get a nice loaf of bread. Rachel from the blog and then make soup included a bottle of mesquite olive oil from Texas Olive Ranch. What a delicious treat. Look at the bright green color of a great olive oil base. The smokey flavor was intense, but not overdone. I kept trying to place the familiar flavor. It was the same smokey flavor of the oil in canned smoked oysters. I love that flavor.

Thanks Rachel.

How Long to Boil an Egg

Water boils at 212°F. You probably already knew that. But, that's only true at sea level. The boiling point of water changes with pressure, and there is less pressure at higher altitudes. So, at the lowest point in Colorado (3,317 feet) water boils at about 205°F.

The other interesting thing about boiling water is that it never gets hotter than its boiling point. As heat is pumped into the water, the hot water turns to steam and boils off. The remaining water sits happily at the boiling point.

Remember, though, that the boiling point of water changes with the pressure. So, if you put a lid on the pot, the steam fills the space in the pot, the pressure goes up and so does the water temperature. It doesn't go up by much because the pressure releases as soon as it is high enough to push past the weight of the lid.

All that is by way of introducing an experiment Gail and I did on how long you need to boil an egg to reach different degrees of firmness. You might be familiar with the 3 minute, or soft boiled egg. They are cooked just enough to whack open with a knife and eat with a spoon. It's the sunny-side-up of the boiled egg world.

On the light side of the boiled egg world is the coddled egg. A coddled egg is boiled for 1 minute to both slightly firm up the whites and to disinfect the outer shell. Coddled eggs get used in Caesar salad dressing or to prep an egg for better poaching.

On the other side of the boiled egg world is the hard boiled egg. There are two ways to hard boil eggs. One is to boil the heck out of them for 15 to 20 minutes. The other is to put the eggs in cold water, then bring the water to a boil. When the water is boiling, cover the pot and turn off the heat. In two hours, the eggs will be perfectly boiled and cool enough to handle.

We were looking for the perfect egg for the center of a Scotch egg. We want them firm enough to peel, but runny enough to add some moisture to the dish. So we test boiled eggs for various lengths of time. Here are the results:

3 minutes
    1/4" of soft cooked whites with some remaining runny
    completely runny yolk
    not possible to peel

4 minutes
    fully firm whites
    yolk starting to firm, but still runny
    hard to cut open like a soft boiled egg
    might be possible to peel with patience and luck

5 minutes
    fully firm whites
    1/4" firm yolk, with runny center
    can be peeled with care

6 minutes
    fully firm whites
    1/4"+ firm yolk, with runny center
    easy to peel

7 minutes
    fully firm whites
    1/8" firm yolk, with runny center
    can be peeled with care

8 minutes
    fully firm white
    mostly cooked yolk, with 1/4" soft yolk center
    easy to peel

9 minutes
    fully firm white
    mostly cooked yolk, with 1/8" soft yolk center
    easy to peel



Note that the 7 minute egg seems much like the 5 minute egg. We switched to a new batch of eggs at 7 minutes. The new eggs were slightly larger and a bit fresher. This happy accident points out that you can't perfectly time how done an egg will be. If you need a specific level of cooking, you might do a test egg at 6 minutes and use the table above to predict the result you are looking for.

Austin to Boston Swap Package Arrived

I received my Austin to Boston swap package today. My swap partner, Rachel from the blog and then make soup, sent a package beyond my expectations. I'll run down the contents in a minute, and you can all come back for details on the contents in future posts.

But first, we both sent our packages last Thursday. Rachel sent hers via USPS and it arrived this morning, safe and sound. I sent mine via FedEx ground. It's not there yet. I'm disappointed.

Here is me opening Rachel's package. See the confusion on my face as I try to figure out what the three unlabeled items are. Rachel warned me in an earlier email, "Oh and if any of the items need explanation, email before tasting! Fair warning..." and "that which does not kill us..." I resisted my inner two-year-old's urge to put them into my mouth, and emailed for an explanation.



Finally, the contents:

The unidentified items were kaffir lime leaves, bay leaves and "wild" chili piquin all from Rachel's yard. That's the best. The pecans are from a neighbor's yard.

The packaged goods included Texmati mushroom medley wild rice, Roundrock honey and honey lip balm, Texafrance bluebonnet honey mustard, austiNuts dry roasted pumpkin kernels, Central Market peach salsa, Harriet's Original Texas ranch dressing (with jalapenos), Texas Olive Ranch mesquite olive oil, Full English Food rock buns, and New Canaan Farms Fredricksburg peach jam.

Rachel also included a shopping bag from H-E-B market and a copy of edible Austin magazine. The last item was a supply of business cards for her blog. I'm thrilled with this because I recently made a card for my blog. So now I know I'm not the only one. I had planned to include one in my box, but it fell out of my brain.

Thank you, Rachel. I'm thrilled with my package. I'll be reporting individual items in later blogs. We've already started digging in.

Mary Chung's in Cambridge: Our Favorite Chinese Food

Last time we went to Mary's we were so eager to dig in, we forgot to take pictures for the blog. So this article is well overdue. Mary Chung's has been our favorite Chinese restaurant since we started eating there in college. We've since hooked our daughters on it and they are jealous whenever we go without them.

By appearance, Mary's is a typical Chinese hole in the wall. But make no mistake by ordering the typical chow mein or pu pu platter. The menu is not American-classic-Chinese. Instead of wonton soup try the suan la chow show, a soup-like dish of wontons over beansprouts in a super-spicy ginger sauce. Instead of those red spare ribs, have the pan fried Peking ravioli, which comes with the same spicy ginger sauce. But go ahead and have the chiken wings. They are the best you will ever have, with a much richer flavor not simply overpowered with salt and oil.

My favorite dish is one of their specialties, dun dun noodles with shredded chicken. It will be hard to believe this is so good, but trust me. These are thick lo mein style noodles in a spicy peanut sauce. I've gotten close to making this at home, but never with the complexity and richness that Mary's has. My main ingredients are peanut butter, garlic, soy sauce, pepper sauce, vinegar and stock. By the middle of the dish, I'm quenching the peanuty fire with enough water to make me explode, and I want more noodles.

Last night we had another dish that is becoming a new standard for us, the lion head. It's a giant pork meatball in a light broth with cabbage. Don't skip the broth. We also had the general Bau's chicken, which comes with crispy broccoli and large, juicy chunks of slightly spicy, slightly citrusy chicken. As usual, we walked out with over-stuffed bellies and a big bag of leftovers. It doesn't get better than that.

Fall Love from Lexington to Noele

Talking to Noele yesterday, she mentioned she was missing the fall views in Lexington. We miss her, too. Here are some shots I took for you yesterday, Noele.

View of the Battle Green

The Bandstand

Battle Green Detail

The Town Pool

Tree Near the Monroe Tavern

Details of that Same Tree

And finally, Ranc's

Oktoberfest Celebration Meal with Friends

When I think about Oktoberfest, I think more about beer than food. We had friends over for an Oktoberfest meal recently. The beer I had was not worth a mention here, but oh my the food was great. Gail researched traditional Oktoberfest foods, we practiced the ones we weren't familiar with and made a feast of rich German dishes.

For an appetizer we made pretzels and a cheese dip loaded with butter, garlic and caraway seeds called obatzda. The pretzels were firm and chewy, but didn't hold enough cheese in each bite, which was probably okay because I would have eaten large amounts of that cheese if the pretzels had held it. Gail made some extra pretzels with cinnamon on them that were perfect as a light breakfast.

For dinner we made whiskey roast chicken, steckerlfisch, bratwurst, spaetzel with mushrooms, potato pancakes, tomatoes, and sauteed green beans with tomatoes. The vegetables were from Gail's garden. There probably aren't any legitimate Oktoberfest vegetables. We used trout for the steckerlfisch, and it was really amazing. I'm glad we practiced it once before. The first time it came out over-cooked, but this time worked out perfectly.

I made an apple strudel for dessert using the recipe from the Joy of Cooking. It was an awful lot of work, but it came out very well. The recipe says that an expert can stretch out the dough to a square yard. I was able to get about half of that, and can't imagine how it would be possible to get it that thin.