Author: doodledweller
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Flakes, III
It’s said that making pies is not easy, but if you’ve gotten proficient at puff pastry, you’ll see that it’s just another piece of pie. Call it pie in America, tart in France, or crostata in Italy, it’s all about a sweet or savory filling studded by a flaky pastry dough. There is more than…
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Flakes, II
The croissant is butter and flour fermented into crispy, airy, and buttery flakes. It feels magical that a yeasted wheat dough filled with so much butter could rise into such an open crumb and flaky pastry. But it is possible because of lamination. Yeast works between layers of butter, digesting flour to transform layers of…
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Flakes
I’m talking about flakes of butter marbling a slab of pastry dough for delectable puff pastries. Only simples ingredients, mostly flour and butter, but with proper techniques and time, will create light and airy pastries like palmiers and croissants or a flaky and scrumptious crust base for pies and tarts. Techniques – because making puff…
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Food is Art
The mimosa is brunch’s popular cocktail. Made with Champagne and orange juice, it’s named after the beautiful mimosa flower for its bright yellow hue. But did you know that there is another cocktail made in a similar manner, of Prosecco and white peach juice, called the Bellini. The story of how its name came upon…
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On Reading
There’s much concern around reading. It’s demonstrated through the anxieties around our children’s ability to read – how soon, how much, and how fast. And we’re right to be concerned. Reading is the most basic and low-cost, yet has the power to change the world. Not just about a passing school grade, but being able…
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Hồ Xuân Hương’s Poetry
About 200 years ago, there was a Vietnamese poet named Hồ Xuân Hương. Born into a culture heavily influenced by Confucianism, during a time when women were to abide to the three obediences and the four virtues, she had the audacity to write poetry that was as sexual as obnoxious. For a kid reading her…
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Poetry
Some folks, including myself, find it difficult to understand poetry. A big part of it is sentence structure, which does not align closely to speech the way a novel does. Classical poetry conforms to rules and forms, but modern poetry, especially the free-verse kind, hardly does. Another reason is missing context, the lack of knowledge…
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Banks’ Rose
I was at a river of chocolateThere she was, Banks’ Rosethousands upon thousandstiny bouquets dangling like wind-chimesfleeting, fragile, delicate. I stand with her at a T-junction,where time standsstretching thininvisible. She’ll soon dieBut I’ll be here,waiting for the rose and her fragrant, soft petalslingering around just enough to be solovable, magical, fantastical.
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Ode to the Octopus
Eight limbsShe’s not simply crawlingShe is the Kraken that watches the waterlike she’s got eight eyes,circling her universefor every lump, every bump, every slit, every crack. So watch out when she comesshe is the Medusa of the seapivoting, sucking on her preywrapping enemies into her wombdrowning them in ink so black they’d wonderif it were…
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Juniper for Jupyter
My mind is stuffed, likea holiday turkey, full of breadand celery and spicesof a lifeTwo scores, and then some So forgive the mind, if it takesColdplay for Cold StoneJuniper for Jupyter Though I’ve wondered, Has it figured out the shortest pathto reach the deepest corner,the oldest door isloosely coupledwith iambs and rhymesheuristicallyapproximatelyprobabilistically Once upon a…
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