Yelly Eats

Baking pan de sal!

Yelly

The pan de sal is ubiquitous (HUGE word alert!) in the Philippines.  It is sold in every corner bakery, in every panaderia, in various shapes and sizes.  It is bread that has been enjoyed in the Philippines for centuries, as apparently, it was introduced by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century.

Since moving to the UK, I have been looking for a British equivalent and there have been near misses, but not quite like the real thing.  Pan de sal, when translated from Spanish, means salt bread.  Funnily, it is more sweet than savoury.   I wrote about baking pan de sal last year and since then I’ve been trying out various recipes from online sources.  Now, though, I can finally say that I’ve perfected my version of the Philippine bread staple.  I’ve tried several recipes and have now found that putting the recipes together in a system that works for me does really work.  Here’s my take on the pan de sal:

Ingredients:

  • 500g strong bread flour (can also be substituted with whole wheat or gluten-free flour)
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 75g butter
  • 150ml milk (full fat, semi-skimmed or skim milk)
  • 70g sugar
  • 1 packet active dry yeast (or 7g)
  • 1 egg
  • 15ml vegetable oil
  • 1 cup bread crumbs (or dry polenta/corn meal)

Directions:

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.  Mix until well combined (I use a balloon whisk to do this because I find that this mixes the ingredients quickly) and set aside.
  2. In a sauce pan, heat the milk over low heat.  Add the butter and sugar and mix until the butter and sugar are melted.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool until lukewarm in temperature.  Once lukewarm, add the yeast and stir until the yeast is dissolved into the milk mixture.
  3. Add the egg and oil to the flour mixture and mix well.  Mix the milk and butter mixture with the flour until a wet dough forms.
  4. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.  If you’re kneading by hand, this should take about 8-10 minutes.  Steps 3 and 4 can be done in a free-standing mixer with a dough hook attachment with step 3 in the lowest speed setting and turning up the mixer to the next speed to add the butter and milk mixture and knead the dough for about 5 minutes.
  5. Place the dough in an oiled bowl and allow to proof for an hour or until the dough has risen to double its size.
  6. After proofing, punch the dough to deflate it and turn it out onto a floured surface.  Knead the dough by hand for 5 minutes then form it into a ball.  Cut the dough in half using a pastry cutter or a knife.  Form the dough pieces into a ball and repeat until you have 8 dough balls.  Once you have 8 dough balls, cut each in half and roll in bread crumbs.  This makes 16 large rolls but the recipe can make up to 20 rolls.
  7. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and place the dough pieces cut side up on the pan.  Allow for enough space for the dough ball halves to expand.  Allow to proof for another hour or until it doubles in size.
  8. Preheat the oven to 190ºC (375ºF).  If using a fan oven preheat to about 160ºC (320ºF).  Place the baking pan in the oven and bake the dough for 15 minutes.

Pan de sal

Yelly Eats

Fig squares

Yelly

I’ve been under the weather for quite a while and it’s been a very difficult week.  I was admitted to hospital overnight on Monday night for observation.  But they didn’t find anything, so that, in itself, is a relief.  I still have my headache though, which is a bit worrying.

My favourite thing to do when trying to comfort myself is baking.  Sometimes how I feel affects my baking results, but more often than not, I find comfort in the baking process.  I felt the need to bake yesterday and I had dried figs in my cupboard that needed using.  I intended to use the dried figs to make fig bars ala Fig Newtons but I wasn’t sure if I had all the ingredients.  So my fig squares were born.

They are lovely and squidgy and crumbly at the same time.  They remind me slightly of Fig Newtons which made me excited to go home because I’m sure my mum would love them (she absolutely loves Fig Newtons!).

I’m being very careful with my sugars so I’ve only had one tiny piece (yes, really) of the fig squares.  But I’m happy to share the love, so here’s the recipe!

Ingredients:

  • 150g all purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 175g brown sugar
  • 125g unsalted butter, softened
  • 250g dried figs, chopped

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
  2. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder together with a balloon whisk until well combined.
  3. In separate a mixing bowl (am using a free standing mixer but you can also do this by hand with a balloon whisk), combine softened butter and sugars and beat until the mixture is smooth and fluffy (about 4 minutes by mixer and about 7-10 minutes if beating by hand).  Add the eggs one at a time, making sure that the egg is well-combined before adding the next one.  Add the flour mixture in quarters.  It will look like you don’t have enough batter but it will be fine, I promise!  Add the chopped figs and mix until everything is well-distributed.
  4. Spread mixture in a greased 17.5cm x 26.5cm (or thereabouts) pan lined with baking parchment (I learned that lining the baking pan with parchment is good because it makes it easy to release the cake from the pan) and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  This recipe makes up to 24 squares.

This recipe will also work with prunes, dates and raisins.  If using raisins, it would be best to soak the same amount in about 75ml of water overnight until the raisins are plumped up.  If you want a boozy version of the fruit squares, soak the fruit in about 30ml of either brandy or rum and add the fruit (with the brandy or rum) to the mixture.

Figbars

Yelly Eats

The Bell & Brisket Fix

Yelly

I remember really craving salt beef sandwiches.  And I remember the great salt beef sandwich search.  It was quite the exciting thing, trying to find the best place for salt beef sandwiches in London (I wasn’t expecting to find it in Essex–I’m glad to be proven wrong though, so if there are good purveyors of salt beef sandwiches in Essex, can I get a shout out?).  I now have two favourites for salt beef sandwiches:  The Bell and Brisket and Monty’s Deli.  But the sentimental favourite will always be The Bell and Brisket because it was the first place I’d gotten the long-awaited sandwich from.

My first salt beef on rye sandwich with American mustard in the UK was from The Bell and Brisket and even now, I still smile when I remember how good it was when I took that first bite!  It was so good!  And the sandwich looked sooooooo pretty!  I remember wanting to take a picture for posterity.  Considering that this sandwich traveled from London to Harwich, I thought it traveled quite well!

BrisketBel

One of my favourite salt beef sandwich incarnations is the salt beef with kimchi either on rye or on a bagel.  I remember having it first at Queen’s Head in Soho when Bel had her pop-up shop there.  She had meal deals and served a selection of pickles with her salt beef sandwiches.  I was a bit dubious about the kimchi with the salt beef, but it was two of my favourite food things: salt beef and kimchi.  It wouldn’t hurt to try it!  It was a salt beef eureka moment.  It was quite the East meets West food fusion moment.  Who knew salt beef would work amazingly well with kimchi.  Well, obviously, Bel knew!

BrisketBelQH

It was ages since I had a salt beef sandwich from Bel.  Last week, on Friday, I saw a tweet from Bel saying she was at KERB in Kings Cross.  I quickly sent her a tweet to ask her how long she was going to be there.  I thought it was the best time to catch her since I hadn’t had a Bell and Brisket fix in ages!  I was quite relieved that we managed to catch her there.  I had my salt beef and kimchi bagel and was in salt beef heaven!

Salt Beef and Kimchi

The meat is wonderfully flavoured and is meltingly soft.   There is something fundamentally comforting about hot salt beef sliced fresh right in front of you.  The salt beef sandwich is quite an experience and I would recommend The Bell and Brisket to anyone and everyone!   The Bell and Brisket is at Kings Cross with KERB on Fridays, every week, until 2:30PM.  If you’re there, make sure you get one of the sandwiches offered because they are dee-vine!!!

The Bell and Brisket at KERB

Yelly Writes

Now I’ve really done it!

Yelly

This week has been a wash out.  A complete washout.  I haven’t been to work this week because I was in hospital overnight Monday night.

I’ve had a niggling headache for a couple of weeks and it all came to a head on Saturday.  I just starting feeling horrible and everything was out of kilter.  Then I started losing all the food that I was trying to eat.  And it went on throughout the weekend.  I didn’t want to worry my family in Manila so I had to keep fairly still when I was chatting to them on Skype so that I wouldn’t feel nauseous.  On Monday, I decided to go see the doctor because I still had the headache and I was still throwing up.  I thought it was another stomach bug that I’d caught while commuting as the people I travel with on the trains have no sense of infection control.

At the doctor’s surgery, I was examined and told that I had to go to the hospital because my blood sugar was sky high and because my symptoms pointed to something more serious.  It was slightly worrying because at that point I thought all I had was a bug.  So I took myself off to the hospital where I was told that they wanted to keep me overnight for observation.  So they popped an IV cannula in my arm to prepare me for what might be an insulin drip or something else.  From what I understood from the doctors, they wanted to rule out any neurology problems caused by either a throat or a lung infection, or something else.  It was the undiscussed “something else” that I didn’t like.  I didn’t like not knowing.  The fact that I was asked to do the Romberg test three times was a tiny bit worrying.  I only breathed a sigh of relief when the consultant said that my Romberg test showed “nothing of concern”.

Waiting for a hospital bed

I hate hospitals.  It reminds me of illnesses, deaths of family members and my brother being always ill when he was little.  But there I was, in NHS haute couture (aka a pink hospital gown that opens in the back), with a cannula (IV needle) stuck in my arm.  I felt really sorry for myself because hospitals in the UK are different from hospitals in the Philippines.  Hospitals in the Philippines allow for “watchers” to stay with the patient, hospitals in the UK don’t.  Mind you, I understand why people aren’t allowed to stay in the hospitals.  It all boils down to infection control.  So there I was, with a pounding headache, feeling completely sorry for myself and an iPhone that was running out of juice!  It was a good thing I had my Kindle with me because otherwise, I would have been bored out of my mind!  In hindsight, I found it funny that what I was most worried about was that my iPhone was running out of power.  I think, subconsciously, I just didn’t want to think about what was wrong with me.

IV cannula

I know it might sound inconsequential, but one of the reasons I disliked being in hospital was the food.  Hospital food is meant to nourish the body and not necessarily ambrosial!  I was famished because after tossing my cookies for two days, I, basically, hadn’t eaten anything for days!  So the evening I was admitted into hospital, I wasn’t really looking for anything to eat.  I did appreciate it when a lady wielding an efficient looking trolley of hot drinks asked if I wanted a cup of tea.  There is nothing more comforting than an cup of strong, milky tea!  Breakfast was whole wheat toast and a small bowl of bran flakes swimming in milk.  Lunch was minced beef, with boiled potates and vegetables with a bowl of rice pudding for dessert.  Lunch wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t inspired either, and dessert was just not right for a diabetic because it was overly sweet.  Don’t worry, I didn’t have any of it, save the little taste that I had.

Lunch

I was placed in a ward but was in a side room all by myself.  Mind you, I thought that was a good thing because, after I was settled into my room I started bawling my eyes out.  There I was, a grown woman, wanting my mummy!

I was told the following day that I could be discharged and that after all the tests and a CT scan, it was only an atypical migraine.  My blood sugar skyrocketing was due to the fact that I was throwing up and not keeping my meds in (at least, that’s my theory, and not the medical professionals’!).  I still have a headache that comes and goes and I think I may need to see the doctor again because my headache still hasn’t gone completely.  Although, that being said, it’s no longer a pounding, head-splitting pain and is more bearable with pain meds.

It was sort of a turning point experience because it made me look at how I’m taking care of myself.  I can’t really deny that I am a diabetic and I can’t go on living the way I live.  I can’t miss my medicines.  I really need to watch what I eat and my excuse that if I eat in moderation whatever I want will no longer work.  And I know I can still bake, but I need to bake more savoury things than the sweet things that I enjoy making.  I need to take care of myself.  I really need to.  Otherwise, I will find myself in an even worse predicament than I found myself this week!

What a week it has been!

Hospital bracelet

Yelly Writes

Cleansing ritual

Yelly

I did something really good yesterday.  I cleared most of my email inbox!

From 1,327 emails down to 93 – with all emails properly filed, saved and, when appropriate, deleted!  I feel absolutely cleansed!

emails

Yelly Writes

The Wall

Yelly

I have hit the proverbial writing wall.

I’ve got so many things I want to write about, I’ve take so many pictures that I want to post and I’ve started writing the blog entries, but I can’t seem to finish anything!  In my head I know exactly what I want to write about, I know exactly what elements are part of the entry but as I sit in front of my PC and look at that blinking cursor, I freeze.  The words just won’t come!

I think the writing muses have gone away somewhere.  I’m thinking they’ve gone to somewhere warm and sunny.  I feel a bit put out that they didn’t invite me on their spring break!  I really wish they would come back.  I really want to start writing again.

Yelly Writes

Looking for the blue door

Yelly

My feet were killing me (I’d been wearing only heels for months and on this London trip I only brought flats–let me tell you, that was not intentional!  My feet and leg muscles were telling me, in no uncertain terms, exactly how they felt about wearing flats after a heels-only arrangement for months!  They hated the idea and me at that particular moment in time).   They were absolutely murdering me.  But I walked on–completely ignoring Portobello Road (which was an experience in itself – especially when the market is on!).

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I walked on because I wanted to go to a Filipino food place.  But as the experience was definitely forgettable, I won’t talk about it again.

My disappointment was all but forgotten when I left the Filipino food place because a few doors down was a familiar looking bookshop.   People were posing in front of the shop, having their pictures taken and I couldn’t understand why.  And then it dawned on me: I was in Notting Hill and they were posing near a BOOKSHOP!  I ran (hobbled really quickly, more like!) the 100 meters to the bookshop and gasped (yes, out loud!) because it was THE bookshop.  It was THE bookshop where the scenes for the Travel Book  Company were shot for the movie Notting Hill (which rangs high up in my list of favourite movies, near enough to Sliding Doors for it to matter a lot!).  I tried to be cool.  I tried to be nonchalant and I managed to convince myself that I only wanted a photograph of the shop front, that that was enough.  So snap away I did!  Only just one photo!  Ha!

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So I walked away, and round the corner, I found the Notting Hill shop of the Biscuiteers.  I had a look around the shop and oohed and aahed at the lovely iced biscuits.  But I really wanted to ask the shop keeper if he knew where the house with the blue door was.  I figured if they were local, they’d know where William Thacker’s house with the blue door was.  I was told to go back to the Notting Hill Bookshop because the lady who ran the shop would definitely know.  So my crown iced biscuite securely stored in my purse, I went then went back to the Notting Hill Bookshop to ask directions.

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I went around to the bookshop because it was a bookshop and I LOVED bookshops.  There’s something about the smell of bound paper that comforts me.  Plus I didn’t really want to pounce on the lovely shop lady and just get the information and run out of the shop!  It didn’t seem right.  They had a copy of the Travel Book Shop Company’s sign up in the area where Rufus the thief stuffed a book down his trousers–or at least that’s where I thought it was shot.  Apparently the interior layout of the shop hasn’t changed, it remains exactly same as it was in the movie!  I couldn’t help myself and did a happy little dance because I was — sort of! — sharing a space with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts!

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I bought a cloth book bag and a fridge magnet (to add to my growing collection) because I felt that I owed it to the lovely lady who ran the shop.  As I waited at the till for her to ring up my purchases, I asked if she knew where the house with the blue door was.  I also apologised in the same breath as I know she gets asked the same question time and time again.  She laughed and gave the directions.  I was relieved to hear that it was only a block away because as excited as I was to be in the Travel Bookshop, my feet were still hurting!

After a few pained steps, there it was, the house with a blue door!  And for a while, I stared at the house, trying to decide why it looked a little different (I realised later that the pillars and the area framing the door were painted blue before and now they were white, except for the door).  But it didn’t matter so much that it looked only slightly different.

For one brief shining moment, I was a girl, standing in front of the door, living a dream!

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Yelly Eats

Just saying

Yelly

I logged on knowing that I hadn’t written anything on the blog for a considerable amount of time.  I didn’t really realise that the last blog entry I’d written was the day before Easter.  My how time flies, even when one isn’t having fun.  I’ve been battling a throat infection and a bad bout of flu for the past few weeks.

A few days ago I was in Notting Hill, mostly to find a Filipino restaurant that I’d been looking forward to trying.  I think I’m not alone in saying that if it was a Filipino restaurant, run by Filipinos, Filipinos would flock to it because Filipinos would, if they could.  I had eaten in another Filipino restaurant in London, in Charlotte Street, called Josephine’s.  The decor was a little dated but I didn’t mind it because the service, and of course the food, was wonderful.  Despite the fact that there were other customers, I felt well-looked after, not ignored.

That wasn’t the case in this other restaurant.  I know I definitely looked Filipino and made the point of mentioning that I was Filipino and read about the restaurant which was why I wanted to try it but I got an indifferent response.  Colder than lukewarm.  Most Filipinos would ask where you lived, how long you lived there and what you did for work.  This wouldn’t really be intrusive, it’s just the way Filipinos connect.  There are about 300,000 Filipinos spread all over the UK, a mere drop in the ocean compared the general population.  My experience, so far, has always been Filipinos wanting to connect with each other.  But funnily enough, the warm and effusive welcome for a fellow Filipino that I was hoping for was not what I got.  There was no effort to connect, there was no effort to engage.

The food was okay but the ordering wasn’t explained (the menus were on clipboards on the wall and you took one to the table then ordered at a make-shift looking counter), I had to ask.  The options weren’t explained but after I asked if I could have water instead, I was told they could serve me water.  I just felt like they weren’t interested in the business that I brought in.  And I was massively, massively disappointed.

There was another person in the restaurant, a person who, from the conversation I could overhear was a friend.  The person at the counter talked to this friend more than he talked to me.  I think most restaurants, in this day and age, would fight tooth and nail for punters.  I didn’t feel important to this establishment.  I felt like I was an interruption to their conversation.  I felt completely unwelcome.

Even now when I think about it, I feel like crying.  The entire experience was that awful.  I know I only paid £10 in total for my food.  But I would’ve rather not gone now.  I hope they treat other paying customers differently.  More importantly, if they’re going use a Filipino word for their restaurant name, I pray that they treat fellow Filipinos better because the Pinoys that come to them want to come in and feel like they’re in a Filipino oasis in the hustle and bustle of London.

Service is as service done, but this was badly done.  Very badly done.  I’m certainly not going back to this Filipino restaurant.

Yelly Writes

Thoughts of Lent

Yelly

I grew up going to church every Sunday.  I will even go as far as to say that I have 2 home churches, one that I grew up in and one where I grew up spiritually in.  I went to Sunday school.  I sang in the children’s choir.  I eventually taught Sunday school and daily vacation church school.  My summers were spent in church and I was there nearly everyday!  I sang in the church chancel choir and completely immersed myself in all the church activities.  I spent so much time in church that I think it would be natural for me to miss church at Easter.

I think it’s fair to say that Easter is one of the busiest weeks in the Christian calendar, apart from Christmas.  Funnily enough, there is a Filipino term (Pasko ng Pagkabuhay) which translated means Christmas of the Resurrection.  We start counting down to this week from Ash Wednesday.  But it all starts unfolding on Palm Sunday, when Christians celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with a Palm Sunday service.  The Catholics in the Philippines have their beautifully woven palm fronds blessed in church and they display this in their homes, mostly on their windows.  I grew up in a Methodist church and while we didn’t have the blessing of palm fronds, children of the Sunday school class came into the church waving their palms to re-enact Jesus’ triumphant entry.  This Sunday also marks the beginning of a very busy week.

I remember choir rehearsals in earnest because we would be singing during a series of services.  Our church usually had a service for the last supper where we would have the washing of the feet ceremony.  Our minister and members of the church would recreate the moment when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet in a display of his humility and servanthood.  We would have a communion service to commemorate the last time Jesus broke bread with his followers before his death and when he foretold of Judas’ betrayal.

One service that is closest to my heart is the Seven Last Words on Good Friday.  We start off the service at one o’clock in the afternoon.  We have seven speakers, a mixture of lay members and ministers, all speaking about the biblical basis of Jesus’ seven last statements.  Interspersed with the short sermons are songs by the choir.  The choir chronicles the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life with songs commemorating the kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ journey carrying the cross through the Via Dolorosa, His nailing on the cross, His message to His disciple entrusting his mother into his care and His subsequent surrender of His spirit and His life into His Father’s hands.  Each song that we sings makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end because all the songs just underline the great sacrifice that The Lord undertook to save the world.  And because the songs paint a picture of how it was to be there, it just shakes me down to my foundations.  What it must have felt to be there!

We usually finish at three o’clock which is popularly believed to be the time of his death.  After all the speakers have finished their messages, and the choir have sung all their songs, the church is stripped as a sign of mourning.  Because Christ is dead and we are bereft without His divine presence.

Black Saturday is usually celebrated in silence, in contemplation.  Nothing really happens on a Saturday.  But the choir does try to sneak in a few hours of practice because we do have a sunrise service and an Easter Sunday service to sing in.

Easter Sunday is celebrated in so many ways.  But my favourite is a sunrise start.  We have an Easter sunrise service where messages of hope, joy and salvation resound in the sermons and the songs from the choir.  As a Christian, it is lovely to greet the brand new rays of the sun with the reassurance that Christ is not dead, He is alive and sitting at His Father’s right hand and waiting to come back for all of us.  We have an Easter Sunday service (yes, after the sunrise service, which is usually an ecumenical service with all the Christian churches in our community) that finishes with a lovely (and very traditional) Easter egg hunt for the children.

While I will enjoy the odd chocolate bunny and the occasional chocolate egg, and enjoy the bank holiday and the respite from the rat race,  the reason for the season will always resonate in my heart.  I will always know that Easter is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, Christ’s ascension to heaven.  It is the fulfillment of the promises in the Bible.

Easter will always bring me hope, joy and a wonderful reminder of my salvation by Christ, but I will always feel a twinge in my heart because I will be missing my church family and the fellowship of Christians that I grew up with.  It is always wonderful to celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises with like-minded individuals.

Fairview Park United Methodist Church - photo credit: Matt de Guzman
Fairview Park United Methodist Church – photo credit: Matt de Guzman