City Folk

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Lincoln Park Whole Foods/NYC

Preview

When I'm in transit, I often take spy photos of people with my iPhone. At least, I assume they don't know I'm taking pictures of them. Here's one man on the Blue Line downtown, whose beautiful shoes I could not capture in one shot.

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My dad's website is up.

Green Tea & Red Bean Paste Macarons // 抹茶とあんこのマカロン

I'm very pleased to share my macaron-making process! Thanks for the comments on the previous posts. My macarons are all gone! Anyway, as promised, here are some more photos and some commentary.

As previously mentioned, I used the book, "I ♥ Macarons" by Hisako Ogita. There are a couple of confusing moments, but what pastrybook doesn't have such moments? You just deal with them when you get to them. Ogita recommends starting off by drawing circles on the parchment paper. I found that tracing the inner circle of a roll of Scotch tape works well. I drew the circles with a pencil on one side of the paper, and then flipped it later so that I didn't directly poison myself and others with traces of baked pencil lead. Not sure how scientific that thought was.

I found this almond flour at Whole Foods, but it was $12.99. At my local non-overpriced grocery (Strak & Van Til, formerly and fondly known to me and my family as Cub Foods), there was a label for it priced around $9, but the product itself was nowhere to be found. Ogita notes that the powdered sugar shouldn't have cornstarch in it, so I went with the Whole Foods' organic powdered sugar that contains tapioca starch. Not sure what the difference is, but I just went with it. This is also the stage at which you add dried flavoring ingredients like green tea (matcha), roasted soy bean (kinako), powdered flavors (caramel, instant coffee grinds, tea, cinnamon, sesame, cocoa, sesame), or ground dried fruits. I damn near forgot to add my matcha, as you can see.

You use a strainer to sift the flour and sugar twice! to get a very fine blend of flour, powdered sugar, and if you remember, dried flavoring. As you can see, I have still forgotten about the matcha at this point.

After sifting twice, I turned around and saw the tiny canister of matcha powder my mom gave me and frantically mixed it in my flour and powder mixture. Matcha powder is already really fine, but apparently it can be finer. I tapped the teaspoon I used and shook the powder onto the flour, and somehow this pleased the Baking Gods and I was able to mix it in pretty well, albeit a little late.

I've never made meringue before, so this is where I stressed a little and forgot to take pictures of the fluffy awesomeness of fresh meringue. I also almost forgot to add food coloring (the matcha powder isn't enough to get that nice deep green color). I had bought neon food coloring (presumably good for Easter eggs?), and diluted the green with a little water and added it to the meringue. Then I slowly added the flour/sugar/matcha.

I did the macaronnage step as best as I could (spread out the batter on one side of the bow, then scoop the batter from the bottom and turn it upside down, repeat 15 times), but my batter came out really thin. This did not look right to me at all, so at this point, I was expecting to pull some hilarity out of my oven later. Somehow I did not panic--I tried to see if the batter would get thicker with more macaronnage, tried to estimate how many times I macaronnaged, and in the end nothing new was happening, so I told myself to march on.

I got this basic pastry bag kit at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Macy's failed me.

This part was indeed funny. Because the batter was thin, it was very drippy, and as you can see on the top right, I had some trouble moving from one circle to the next, let alone creating circles. Most of my macarons came out as ovals. Part of the problem is that I didn't hold the pastry bag straight above the paper, and poured at an angle.

Then you let the batter sit for about 5-10 minutes, and the circles should form a thin, taut layer on top so that when you touch it, no batter sticks to your finger. See the depression in the middle macaroon that let me know the drying process was complete. Also take note of the macaron next to it, with the tail.

Halfway through the actual baking process, I turned the tray around as instructed in Ogita's book. When I saw the pieds (the little feetsies on the bottom of the cookies!), I gasped! According to the book, a macaron is not a macaron without these little footsies. Apparently, sometimes the pieds don't form. That's so sad! My macarons were not sad! They grew little pieds! I feel like I'm thinking of them as tadpoles or something. Maybe it's that one macaron with a tail.

This might have been my most favorite part of the process: pairing up macaron cookies to make a little sandwich with the red bean paste. It was like Aristophane's myth in Plato's "Symposium" of how humans were once spherical creatures that were cut in half at the wrath of Zeus, and that's why we now say we feel whole when we fall in love with our significant others, or our "other half." For every odd-shaped and -sized oval, there was another one just like it waiting somewhere on the parchment paper. Except for the tadpole, but it didn't seem to care.

And then I got these little sugary beauties!

For Phoebe: I tried to make pancake macarons. I've seen larger-sized macarons before with cream and fruit fillings. Since I had a lot more batter than I expected, I decided to try to make giant macarons. (Those are just tiny little jars of jam to hold the paper down.)

Unfortunately, this mini-project failed. They were totally deflated when they came out of the oven, and I could only salvage 2 of the 4 big cookies I made when I tried to remove them from the parchment paper. I just ate the other two, which tasted fine; they just fell apart at the touch of the cheese cutting knife I used as a spatula to peel/pry the cookies from the sheet.

Generally, I think I need to be more generous and less nervous with baking time, and I need to get the batter at the right consistency/viscosity, whatever that may be. You can see oil stains clearly on the failed giant macaron above, but they were present on most of my macarons. The stains are a result of something having gone wrong, but overall, they appeared fine and tasted delightful.

***

While giving away and eating the macarons over the course of the weekend, I was trying to figure out why I became obsessed with them in the first place. There is the Tadaaki Wakamatsu necklace, there is the sudden proliferation of them in Japan a couple of summers ago, there is the French connection. But I'm beginning to think that the reason why I became interested in them at all was their dainty and delicate presence in the movie, "Marie Antoinette." I think that movie has affected me more than I imagined, initially. My guess is that I let Sofia Coppola permeate my subconscious like that partially because I learned to appreciate "Lost in Translation," and partially because she used New Order's song, "Ceremony" in "Marie Antoinette," a song that has a dear place in my heart. I don't see much reason to deny the movie's power over me, so I expect to see its influence to pop up now and then as I go along in life. (Like...in furniture.)

I also like the fact that these little charming bastards are so ephemeral in various ways. They are quite pricey when you buy them individually at bakeries, and in Japan, many of them were disappointing. The best ones I had there were from Starbucks, Fauchon, and Yokku Mokku. They are harder to find in Chicago. Furthermore, though I'll keep trying, I doubt I'll make near-perfect macarons in the near future. I have no idea how John Moorehouse was able to make them in the summer for my wedding, but I also know that he's got the Culinary Midas Touch. And surprisingly, making macarons didn't make me want to eat them all at once. They are, as Richard somehow was able to tell or possibly remembered from August, so sweet. Rather than eating them I just wanted to continue making them all weekend, so that I could have various kinds at once, and so that I can continue sharing them with family and friends (and on my blog!) to pass on the macaron love.

My First Macarons

More on how the non-disastrous and non-stressful the process was! Full photographic report to come.

Friday afternoon

Tomorrow afternoon I will make green tea & red bean paste macarons using this book, which I received for Hanukkah from Mordecai's parents. Hopefully things will go right!

Weekend

Wednesday Snapshots

randomness in the neighborhood


takashi yagihashi ramen at macy's


block 37


cousin to my 'xtra arm'


beard papa's strawberry cream puff

Monolid Mysteries

In grade school, a girl asked me how it's possible that I put contacts in my eyes.


In high school, when we were learning about how the pupil dilates and constricts under different lighting, Mr. Venckus or Ms. Tosto said, "Turn to your neighbor, have them close and open their eyes and then observe the movement of their pupils." My neighbor was unable to make these observations because there is little difference between the color of my pupil and iris.

I am a monolid. It sounds like a bad word, a term of derision, an epithet, but it isn't, and I don't know how else to describe the situation. I do not have any creases in my eyelids, so a) my eyes look tiny and b) unless I pile on the eyeliner like eyeshadow, my eyeliner is rarely visible. When I look downwards, you can see some of it (first photo) but when I look straight ahead or upwards, my precious work disappears into the folds of my eye somewhere (second photo). This is why I've extended my eyeliner past the outer corner of my eye for a cat-eye look. Actually, I took on that look after seeing it so stylishly and nonchalantly on my Plato professor's eyes. Unfortunately, that may have been all I learned that seminar.

I've never considered surgery or temporary methods to get the crease, because while the monolid is inconvenient in some ways, deep down, I like it. I have gotten similar advice from different sources regarding eyeliner on monolids, so I take the following to be the basics of monolid makeup. My cousin Mai gave me a makeup book from Japan, and I was excited to see a whole page dedicated to eyeliner on monolids. It suggests applying thick lines above and below the pupil and on the upper outer corner of the eyelid. Now that I think about it, I don't even follow this advice very well. I'll work on that. Anyway, likewise, the Saks Fifth Avenue man at the Shu Uemura counter (RIP) told me not to apply liner all around the eye, because it makes the eye look smaller. I suppose the excessive eyeliner crowds the eye, emphasizing the darkness of the eyeliner over what little white is visible. Here is the scan from the book Mai got me that may or may not render my words some sense.

If you look carefully, like in the lower right corner (click scan for full size)...GIRL AIN'T EVEN A REAL MONOLID! I spy some folds on the inner and outer corners. Obviously, the editors can't use a real monolid, because the makeup won't be visible, or it won't be visible enough to look sparkly-pretty in a photoshoot or in the final publication. But it must be the case that there are millions of true blue monolids like myself everywhere. I know there are ways around and through it: here's one good example, and she's got the dewy complexion-look down, too. Lulu says she has small double eyelids, but she always has good, glam makeup. We get by!

For the record, I use assorted Japanese brown eyeshadows from drugstores, Shiseido's cream eyeliner, and Givenchy's Phenomen'Eyes mascara.

New Year

Who knew furry leopard robes existed? Maddi hOokEd iT uP! And Matted Memu fits perfectly in the pocket.

New Year's Resolutions and New Year's mochi are a lot alike. They get a lot of hype in January and February, and then they are totally abandoned for the rest of the year.

Last year, I made a somewhat attainable resolution that I more or less successfully stuck with: to wake up before noon everyday. I quickly realized that I had set the bar way too low, so that's why I was more or less successful. This year, I aim to make use of mornings better, even if they are spent cruising the Internet or applying makeup, which means I should wake up by 9AM or earlier. Included in this Resolution Package is making decent use of Sundays. I usually sleep them away, and then go into a reading panic at night because of Monday seminars.

My other resolution is to have healthy hair and nails. I damage my hair too often, and I realized that I don't need salon manicures because I can make my nails look professionally done at home. So I'll continue going to Salon Moka, and I will be making use of those ULTA coupons I get in the mail every other week. Keipop Nail Salon coming soon!

I found this little end-of-the-year survey on Plans, which I don't really update anymore, so I'll share my responses here.

PERSONAL BEST OF 2009

BOOK: Excerpts from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and Tony Laden's manuscript for a book on social reasoning.

ALBUM: Glee soundtrack, Clipse "Til the Casket Drops," Alicia Keys "Element of Freedom." Honorable Mention: Mariah Carey's "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel," because she's Mariah Carey and I'm Kei.

PLACE VISITED: Detroit!

MEAL COOKED: Mashed potatoes.

MOVIE: "District 9." I'm sure I would have listed "The September Issue" and "Coco Avant Chanel" but I didn't see them.

ARTICLE READ: The Yahoo article that praised Chris Coghlan and suggested he be 2009 Rookie of the Year. As a result of this cover story, I picked Coghlan up for my fantasy team. In turn, I secured many hitting categories, and I would say that this accounted for about 10% of my fantasy victory. The rest was due to beginner's luck.

INFORMATION LEARNED: Kant should be taught in an intro to philosophy of art class.

QUOTE DISCOVERED: "It is a little absurd to go on insisting that physics provides us with the knowledge of the world which is of the highest excellence. Surely the problems we face now are not the same ones for which Bacon and Galileo caught their chills. Our intellectual problems (to say no more) are set up by the very success of those deeds, by the plain fact that the measures which soak up knowledge of the world leave us dryly ignorant of ourselves." Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?

ITEM BOUGHT: Poppersteins; PS3; all of my baseball cards.