For The Love Of Baking

Bake. For the love of baking.

 
These photos are from last year. I was at Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia, waiting for my class to begin. I’d be teaching food photography class that very morning. I got to Sugarflours too early, obviously. The store was still closed, it was around 7. I found this old style cafe in the corner of the block. It was the only business opened in that early hour. The smell of the coffee vaporized and intrigued me in a second. Bangi Kopitiam.

Dragged my heavy backpack to a table at the farthest spot from the counter, plunked myself in a chair and grabbed a menu. One coffee caught my eyes in an instant: Kopi Perempuan. Or translated as Female Coffee. I could almost feel it in my mouth already.

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I have been knowing this dessert for quite long and loving it for its simplicity and complexity at the same time. Simple in your hand, complex on your tastebud. Almost everybody will frown the first time: balsamic vinegar with strawberries? Ya-ha! Not me though. The first time I read about this, it tingled me so hard I ran to the store and got the vinegar i never had any clue before. And it turned out so beautiful i loved it at once. Yada yada yada, it was another love at first bite.
 
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An email came to my inbox the other day, leaking the news: Magnum Cafe will open next Thursday in Grand Indonesia. One eyebrow was raised, all my reckoning was one and one only thing: that joy on the stick i called adult chocolate lollipop ice cream.

I was right. The cafe is dedicated solely to this Belgian chocolate covered ice cream. Yea, that thing. That Magnum. The Magnum.

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Got featured by Femina India Online, so cool. The reporter, Rajani Mani of “Eat Write Think“, she threw very interesting questions like:

• Your favourite cooking smells?
• 5 ingredients you just need to have?
• Other than the knife, name one kitchen tool that you can’t do without?

They are that interesting, try answering them yourself and see if you ever could reach fixed answers. I couldn’t.
 
Although she misspelled my name as Rianna, maybe confused with Rihanna , it was a wonderful article because I got to share my childhood story of where it all began. And, and.. I got to mention Kerupuk, as the one food I simply can’t live without!
 
Thank you, Rajani. You’re pretty.

I baked these this afternoon. It was the easiest coffee cake I’ve ever made. But then again, I rarely whipped up a coffee cake

Coffee cake is not a coffee flavored cake, mind you. It is a simple cake intended to be served in afternoon coffee time, or in my case, tea time. Therefore, it boasts some specific characters:

• a single layer cake - short, looks more like a bar
• doesn’t necessarily have coffee in it
• quick and easy to prepare, you know, to catch up the afternoon sky before it gets dark

Now, this one might not boast the best texture in the world or a mind blowing chocolate flavor. It is dense like a fruitcake and it was a regular chocolatey burst. But hell, it’s the easiest chocolate nibble to make in half an hour, about 35 minutes in the oven, and.. voila! You got yourself a nice companion, beside your tea, to color your afternoon happy.

O yeah, you don’t have to take out your electric mixer. All the tools you need are a bowl, a whisk or spatula, and measuring cups. You don’t even have to sift anything.

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The end of the year like this is the perfect time to slow things down a bit. Looking back to what we have done, instead of looking forward to what we want to do. Be grateful for how far we have gone, instead of worrying of how far more we can go. Grab a cup of hot chocolate and cuddle up on the sofa. With a good book, favorite TV program, the loved ones, maybe a simple sweet nibble, life couldn’t be more satisfying.

The other day I kept left over apple filling from the last private baking class I taught. It was a cold and windy day and I needed something to balance the grey cloudy afternoon. I was exhausted from the last two weeks of nonstop this and that and the fatigue seemed like coming to stay. I opened my freezer and found a stack of filo pastry from.. last year, I guess? Haha. So I took them altogether, the filo and the apple filling, let them come into room temperature and assembled them in a small dish. It turned out to be one hell of an apple pie. And by hell, I mean wonderfully delish.

When you use filo pastry for apple pie, usually an apple strudel will come into your mind. This is just the same, except that it is not *yea, i’m crazy like that*. I didn’t roll the filling inside the filo, I layered them like baklava. That makes them.. what? Layered apple strudle? Apple baklava? No-rolling apple strudle? No-nuts baklava? This is killing me. I’m going back to: apple pie.

What’s best to go with it? I say nothing beats vanilla custard! Yup, homemade vanilla custard you made from scratch, which.. *wait for it*.. I happened to have on hand from the same private class. You can make it thick as cream or a little bit flowing as sauce. It will be just as good. A dollop for a square and you got yourself a world class dessert.

Onto the recipe. Actually this is dead simple it is hardly a recipe. You just layer the filo, brushing with melted butter in betweens, mix the filling and pour, layer the rest of filo, brush the top with yolks, bake. Simple. Right?… No? Ok, here is the recipe.

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Oh, how I miss this event! Zorra hosts the World Bread Day annually and this year I just couldn’t afford to miss it again. I haven’t been making bread for quite some time, so this is about time to roll my sleeves and dig into the flour.

The Italians have biscotti, we Indonesians have Bagelen. A twice baked bread with extreme crispiness, you’ll find yourself covered in all crumbs after you finished one. Bagelen is simply a dinner roll cut in half, spread with lots of whipped butter and powdered sugar then baked again until very crisp and the sweet butter melted to a perfect shine. The trick is after you cut the roll in half, you have to let it stale overnight. A stale bread is dryer than the fresh one, this guarantees the crispiness of the Bagelen when baked again later the second time. Yes, you’re thinking someone in the past just couldn’t let any bread go wasted, hence this bread was created. I wondered where the name Bagelen came from, so I Googled it and discovered that we have an area in Purworejo, Central Java, named Bagelen! Seriously, never heard about it before! So this nibble was originated there and naturally came the name. Parmesan for Parma, Bagelen for Bagelen. Sweet.

Now, let’s bake. Here I used basic soft bread recipe and real butter for the spread. You can use any bread recipe you fancy, or just buy one, then whip up the spread. That simple. And that good.

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I was in Melaka last week, backpacking alone. I got hungry, so I sat down at the nearest stall and ordered. This Nasi Ayam –Chicken Rice Balls– was one of the wonderful things of Melaka. It rounded up my one-day journey there: blissful.

Nasi Ayam Melaka is actually very similar, if not the same, with Nasi Ayam Hainan —Hainan Chicken Rice— of China. The difference was that the chicken was roasted and the rice was shaped into balls. But the gingery fragrance, the serving style: one plate of rice and chicken, one bowl of gingery chicken broth, were no question similar. So I guess this is another peranakan thing, Chinese culture and lifestyle that was adopted by Malays and later on modified to their own local culture producing a new way that is fusion and even richer than before.

So, there I was. An anonymous by-passer, with my predictable big backpack and camera, stranded in a land I never stepped my foot onto. Having a wonderful late lunch of my life. Nasi Ayam Melaka. Blissful.

Clockwise: Uchiet, Iin, Widya, Dina, Riana
Photo courtesy of Iin Sidharta

Human faces! How rare!

Taken from Food Photography Class last Saturday, a special additional class for the “mudikers” whom only stayed very shortly in Jakarta for Idul Fitri. Unscheduled beforehand, we had fun capturing all the nibbles on pretty props I brought to the class. Apparently no one remembered taking photos until some friends came by right after the class was finished. So in a very rare moment, we finally captured our faces. I think this is the only time we took class photo, in terms of FP class.

Wonderful afternoon with wonderful people. And I miss you all already.

An afternoon at Toko Jojo Bintaro
Special additional Food Photography Class for the “mudikers”
Natural Cooking Club

“..an appreciation of every sweat, every hard work, every honest effort,
all great things it takes to make one good food.
Let’s do some justice by capturing them right.
‘Cause when you make people wanna lick the photos,
you know you’ve done good.”
~ Riana Ambarsari ~

Before I forgot everything I wanted to say, I better spilled out anything now. Been wanting to write this for quite a while, I realized if I didn’t start writing right when I had the first chance, most likely I wouldn’t ever write it at all.

I just finished sorting about 400-ish photos and doing minimum editing to them. Those were for 30 recipes included in one of NCC upcoming books. Tomorrow, another 500 photos are waiting for the rest of 30 recipes. I won’t talk about food photography here, what do I know. I’m the street one, I’ll let other fellows do that.

What’s been tantalizing my mind is the irony of a phenomenon called “when a passion turns into a job”. People see it as a dream comes true. A dream job. Where you’ll be having fun instead of working. Well, yes. And no. And I’ll tell you why.

You’ll Lose Your Freedom
A classic conflict, may I say. I like these photos I know the author and editor wouldn’t choose. I sent them anyway only to listen to disagreements of why this photo didn’t show the shape of the food, or why the texture of this food wasn’t obvious, or why the angle is unusual, or why the color tone was extremely soft, or why most parts of this food look blurry. Ha-ha, bite me! You don’t care if one food doesn’t show its shape, or the texture was lost in an out-of-focus weirdly looking world somewhere in the background, or everything looks blurry, or the color was so soft you feel you’re in a dream, or everything is so over exposure or, worst, so dark you have to light a candle. You like it, end of story.
Calm down, don’t worry. The sun is gonna shine tomorrow. Of course you’ll always provide them with the “normative” version of the photos to finally call their stressed out spiky hair to come down to earth. Pick those, people. Our happiness can wait. We still have Dexter Season 6 to look forward to.

You’ll Lose Your Street Style
You get used to the above, gradually you become one of them. You’ll lose your wacky weird street style that was your charm in the first place. What can you say, you were born into this foodie photography sphere with no guidance. You crawled in the dark, dragged yourself out from the darkness until you finally see the light, and now you’re walking tall and proud, ready to explore more of the world in front of you, kick some more a**es. All that by learning your very own experience. First hand, first punch, first blood. You survived by your own way nobody taught you how. Instinctively, you lived. Now somebody else is trying to shape you into a certain form the society would prefer to accept. They told you to wear suit instead of ragged cool jeans, throw away your rasta hair and slick it back shiny. You are a corporate slave in the making. Gone is your bad boy-ethan hawke-rolling stones-tupac shakur charm, if you know what I mean. There, my friend, is where you struggle. To stay true to yourself. To not let anything tell you what is right and what is not. If you’re lucky, you’ll once again survive. When you sent those “unusual” photos anyway, even only to piss them off, there lies your true glory. You smile ear to ear you feel it is all worth it. The hell with the world, you’ve made your point. If you’re lucky.

You’ll Lose Your Appetite To Do Personal Project
For me, this is fatal. I miss doing personal food photo session. I miss doing everything from searching for recipes, shopping solely for that purpose, trying it, sometimes several times to perfect it, sweat myself capturing the result, processing the photos, ..all the way to uploading and finally writing the story. Publish, edit, re-publish. Repeat as needed. They say destination could be anywhere, it’s the journey that counts. And it is indeed a long journey.

I envy those who are still well supplied with time, energy, and, most importantly, enthusiasm, to do this. The sacred thing that brought me to where I am now, ironically. Funny thing, often times I still found myself planning: collected recipes I planned to try, visualized the photos I planned to take, but that’s it. I dunno why it is just not the same anymore. Maybe I’m just tired. Blame it on the work. Easy.

Worst thing is, it even expanded into taking photos in general. Right now I would kill for a chance not to be expected to bring my camera everytime I hang out with friends. And I would kill anybody who expects me to do so. Don’t take me wrong, please, I’m the queen of expression. I love my friends, I love taking photos of them. Just don’t expect me to do it under certain order, anymore. Have mercy.

However..

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