Dinner for three or more...

Between dealing with feeling at a lost of post-dissertation stress and pre-assignment/exams deadlines, and after a week of just literally lying in bed and reading every single book I've wanted to (but couldn't) for an entire week, a cooking/baking bone seemed to have went off somewhere within the make up of my human anatomy.

Today's project consisted of red bean buns (intended to correct the failed attempt from two days ago), and barbeque pork belly, which is one of the best things in the world that is impossible to get here!

As I always like to think: success is best when you get to eat it. And satisfied my tummy certainly was. My photography skills probably needs a lot of brushing up, and so does my portioning skills, as can be seen with the different shapes of the buns. 

The barbeque pork is actually known as cha siew, of cantonese origin and wildly popular from where I come from. We eat it with noodles, in buns, with rice... it's just really good. I used the recipe from makansutra having search high and low around the internet and was not disappointed.  I would definitely recommend the recipe.

As with the red bean buns, they are better known as dou sha bao. Another one of my favourite eats. I especially love it when the buns are fluffy and have a slight sweetness to it, with the filling adding heavenly depth. Such a dish usually takes skills and probably trials and errors to arrive at the ideal. Needless to say, mine turned out satisfactory but certainly short of heavenly. Either way this recipe was the one I used and seem to provide a good guide for the baos, which can be filled with all kind of different things as you like. For example cha siew it self, butter, eggs, the list is endless. This recipe seems to achieve the fluffiness, but sugar is not explicitly included (and is an optional step as per the maker). My baos also turned out yellowish for some reason. I'm not sure what steps I should take to get it to be fluffier and whiter, also it doesn't seem to have that smooth matte-like skin.

I don't know. I'm not a pro. And this would be a second in my trial and error process to achieve real results. So its a step forward.

My term ended two days ago. It wasn't just the term, it was 8 months worth of work bundled and bounded into a 12000/60 pages booklet, dropped off at the undergraduate office with no indication of how it will turn out.  And I am paranoid, really really paranoid. But there's not much I can do now that I have released control of it. I can only pray that what I have done is enough.

Perhaps one of the reason I keep replaying reels of what I could have done is because I really don't know what to do with my life (sorry for being so melodramatic). For the past 2 months, and even more so the last month, all that has been on my mind was it. Before I sleep and first thing when I wake, it wall all my life revolved around. Now that it's gone quite a large part of me is gone too. But I guess its better this way, I was getting too exhausted anyway. 

I am also like, way too heavy due to all the dissertation eating. Not quite what I hoped for.

I hope with this post, goes my last lingering thoughts of dissertation.