π day

Love it, hate it, or don't care at all—today is still π ("pi") day. 😊 (Coincidentally, it also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday today as well.) Could you identify which one is the stargazy pie on my drawing above? 😉 (Hint: The eccentric–looking one!)
(media: pencil and coloured pencils on plain A4 paper)

“...We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”

—said by Anna to Claire in Boston Marriage (a 1999 play by David Mamet; p. 23)

For many of our friends who are mathematicians or maths enthusiasts out there, they're probably celebrating this unusual day: π day. π is the Greek letter "pi" and is also the symbol for that mathematical constant which represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. (😵 Sorry, what was that again? hehe...) I'm probably not the best person to discuss about maths as I'm quite poor at it, haha... So I'll just refer you to this interesting article about π and π day by the late Professor Jonathan Borwein from the University of Newcastle 🇦🇺.

While π is a very special number in the domain of maths—yet still with practical applications—we shall now concern ourselves in the realm of food where pie is something from an oven that is usually delicious, am I right? 😋 A pie is a baked dish of fruit, meat, poultry, fish, and/or vegetables, typically with a top and base of pastry. It can either be savoury or sweet: from meat pies, buko ("young coconut") pies, apples pies, mince pies, and so forth—the variations are virtually endless! More often than not, we use pâte brisée (or shortcrust pastry) to wrap all of that yummy filling inside.

Shortcrust is a crumbly pastry made with flour, fat, and a little water, typically used for pies, flans, and tarts. We want this kind of texture as we don't want our pastry to be tough and hard when eaten—which would be a result of too much gluten formation. Gluten is a mixture of proteins present in cereal grains, especially wheat (and thereby wheat flour), which is responsible for the elastic texture of dough. What makes shortcrust crumbly in nature is due to the action of fat (e.g. butter). We use fat in a shortcrust pastry recipe as a shortening agent that inhibits continuous gluten development.

In order to make shortcrust pastry, we need to interrupt the gluten structure formed when flour and water are mixed together. This is achieved by using the fat as the shortening agent and involves mixing the pastry in two stages: In stage 1, the flour and fat are mixed together so that the flour particles become coated with fat. In stage 2, the water is added and the pastry is mixed until it just holds together. Overmixing at this stage will increase gluten development which reduces the shortening effect and results in tough eating baked products. The figure below shows how this process works to prevent continuous gluten development (Patient 1994).


Structure of shortcrust pastry Fat coats fragments of gluten to prevent them from forming a continuous sheet (Patient 1994)


Anyway. That's all for now my friends. Happy π Day to everyone! 😊 🎉


P. S.  Have you found the stargazy pie on my drawing above yet? 😉 It's a kind of fish pie traditionally made in Cornwall (in the UK), with the heads of the fish appearing through the crust. 🐟 I hope I can make this Cornish pie too someday should I be able to buy pilchards/sardines over here in Perth. 😋

🍽️ My take on the Paleo Diet: Roasted Harissa–rubbed Chicken with Salade Composée & Avocado–Cauliflower Mousse and Coconut–Nectarine Tart

My modest attempt of a watercolour rendition of my Coconut–Nectarine Tart and Roasted Harissa–rubbed Chicken with Salade Composée and Avocado–Cauliflower Mousse
[media: watercolour on plain A4 paper (notice the buckling/warping of the paper); need to use real watercolour paper next time—if I would ever have money to spare for that)]


Hey guys! How are you all doing? 😊 It has been more than a month since my last post. School has been quite busy. I reckon I've already told you that we're not just cooking all the time, but we also have theory classes and time–demanding worksheets to accomplish. In particular, one of our units (SITHCCC307) required us to do research about various types of special diets, do an oral report/presentation of our findings in front of our class, and come up with our own modified dishes that we have to cook during our final practical assessment for that unit. 😱 Yeah, you can just imagine how stressful that sounds! But I took it as a challenge, an adventure, as well as another avenue for creativity. 🤔 💭 → 😃 💡

Our chef instructor assigned me to report about the Paleo Diet. I've heard of this diet fad before, but I couldn't be bothered learning more about it. So, on to the Internet and school library to see what I can find. My full written report—including my modified recipes—can be found at the end of this post. Now for my dishes.

Since the Paleo Diet encourages more protein intake, I decided to use lean chicken breast, because it's relatively cheaper. (We have to source our own ingredients, so I just opted for more economical products instead.) I would have wanted to use exotic venison or even kangaroo or bush chook (i.e. emu) meat. However, they're either expensive or not readily available from where I live. To jazz up my poultry, I decided to use هريسة الفليفلة الحارة (or simply "harissa") which is a spice mix used in Maghreb or North African cuisine. I came up with this idea as I wanted to add a touch of Middle Eastern flavour to my dish. Having worked and lived for two years in Qatar 🇶🇦, I still crave for Middle Eastern / Arabic food from time to time. In addition, I would like to try out new spices and I haven't really used harissa before in my own personal cooking, although I knew it's got a Middle Eastern character because the Maghreb area is still essentially and culturally part of the greater Middle East region.

I didn't want my chicken to be alone and single—like me, hehe...—on the plate, so I've also made a side salad to go with it. I then remembered Rachel Khoo's colourful Salade d’hiver avec une mousse au fromage de chèvre—which in turn got her inspiration from Estonian chef Peeter Pihel 🇪🇪—and thought I'd use that composed salad. But the Paleo Diet doesn't allow cheese and other dairy products. (I even had to take out the bacon from the original recipe!) I then had to replace the Selles-sur-Cher cheese mousse with an alternative. Many Aussies love their avocado and I like avocado too—except for its prohibitive cost most of the time (at least for frugal me, hehe...)—so I said to myself why not create a creamy avocado–based mousse? I thought of other Paleo–friendly ingredients and I selected cauliflower and coconut cream as my base components. I simply call my accompanying salad as salade composée or composed salad, which is basically a modern untossed salad arranged aesthetically on a plate where each carefully chosen ingredient complements the other: hot and cold, raw and cooked, mildly salty and sweet.

Of course, would I forget dessert? No way! I still reckon that a meal wouldn't be complete without something sweet to cleanse our palates. For my Paleo dessert, I recalled watching this video shot in the beautiful state of Victoria and the last dish Rachel made was a chia jam–filled nectarine tart. The Paleo Diet restricts refined sugars, thus I tapped natural sultanas to sweeten my filling. Drawing from my tropical Filipino heritage, I also used coconut to intermarry with the nectarines.

Before writing my report and recipes, I had to test all the modifications I've made—true to my other hat of being a professional scientist / chemist, hehe...

🤓 Experimentation and recipe modification/development in progress... (18 February 2017)

😊 And the initial results were these:

During last Wednesday's (8 March 2017) final practical assessment for our special diet unit, this was how I presented my dishes 😊 :

So, in conclusion, will I switch to a lifetime of adhering to the Paleo Diet anytime soon? Not quite because I still love my rice, bread, and cheese. That's all for now my friends. Before I end here, I share with you a copy of my Paleo Diet report that I submitted. I hope you can also try cooking these two dishes and let me know what you think afterwards. 😉 Bon appétit!