Though I've made some cake doughnuts from time to time, and I've made decent cake-based anko donuts, I really haven't spent much time trying to perfect the yeasted donut.

I'm not sure my waistline could handle me getting it right.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure my waistline couldn't even handle the number of trials required to approach getting it right.

Peach glazed donuts, not ready for prime time

After being sold on some great peaches at the Pike Place Market (not local, but very flavorful), I had an impulse to make something pastry-like. I thought I might be able to make a passable peach glaze.

A little lemon juice, a good peach, and a heavy hand with powdered sugar, and a little amaretto liqueur cooked into a glaze: It seemed like a good idea at the time. The flavor was nice, but it turned out not to make a very good glaze, most likely due to the excessive moisture in the peaches. The texture was very filling-like, or, if used as a glaze, more suitable for something like a Danish or Brioche-based pastry. Had I the foresight to make Berliner instead of donuts with holes, this might have been the perfect use of some good peaches.

My urge to be as natural as possible while minimizing the sugar content turned out to fight me with the donuts, as well. I relied on a German recipe for yeasted doughnuts that I've eyed for years in the back of a cookbook I bought ages ago, thinking that it would be far more likely to get the sugar balance close to my preference than most of the American recipes I've seen.

Donuts with cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar

I was right on that count, but the texture left something to be desired. The dough was a bit tough and excessively chewy. Even early on, working the dough was a bit of a fight. I should have followed my instinct and habit: normally, I don't precisely follow yeasted dough recipes, because the weather, the temperature of the water and other ingredients affect the moisture content. I always work in the flour until I get the texture I want, then add no more flour, even if the ratios don't quite match my usual recipe.

Next time around, I'm going to wing the dough recipe a bit, and probably create a much moister dough, kneaded a lot more gently. I still want to keep the sugar content low, but I might add another two or three teaspoons to see if it helps the texture. I also think I'm going to need to do a bit more research on glazes.

Hiromi and her cheer team had a game on Monday, April 30, just before we headed off to Aomori for a little hot spring vacation and late hanami at Hirosaki.

She's part of Club Cranes, a 2nd-division X-League American Football team sponsored by Toa construction company.

Because there's a fairly long warmup, Hiromi suggested I could wander around the station or drink coffee for a while before heading to the stadium via taxi. But one of her teammates suggested that this was altogether unnecessary, and that perhaps I could serve as their paparazzo for the day. We grabbed some takeaway bento for me and some onigiri for Hiromi right at the station, and the entire group gathered into two or three taxis to head on over to the stadium.

I sat down in the stands at first, but was invited to come down and take a bunch of photos right from the sidelines.

Hiromi

Rehearsal action shot

Chillin'

High energy

Sidelined for a few weeks...

Warming up

The big guy heading back to switch to game gear

After some warmups, it's game time... the Cranes players and cheerleaders change into their game colors. I got to stay close to the action...

The pre-game bow

An early touchdown

 
Hiromi's team took the early lead, but missed the extra point... It put them at a slight disadvantage for the first half.

Rooting for the offense, down by 1

6, 7, 8 and hold

Charging ahead

Most of the team

Miyu and the captain

Go Cranes

Not without risk

Satoko's announcement

That looks painful...

But at least I'm not at the bottom of all this...

Announcement by Megumi

Trio 1

Trio 2

Tough

A young fan and her mother

The big win

More photos are on the Cranes Cheer Blog...

After the game

Everyone else ordered a kind of set meal, but since I'm the odd duck and don't eat animal bits, we ordered a few vegetarian items. With 40 or so people, we completely filled the tatami room at the edge of the little Chinese restaurant we visited.

We had a little to drink, a lot to eat, and some people made a series of little speeches and a few very personal announcements...

My poor camera's 2 GB memory card was completely full at the end of the day, thanks to a couple of days without transferring to my laptop and the excessive number of photos I took that day, but I found some completely blurry images I could toss and made room for a few hurried food shots...

Fried tofu, sweet chili sauce, and cabbage

Pickled vegetables

Slightly crunchy stir-fried potatoes

Chuuka fuu no goma-ae

Saturday marked my first in-store promotion for the Dragon Beard Candy since returning from Japan. I did pretty well with large gift boxes, which was unexpected. This is the second piece of evidence that I may have under-ordered large gift boxes. The small boxes are selling too, but the big boxes are outpacing small box sales for the first time.

I anticipated that the percentage of big gift box sales would increase in November, so I weighed that when placing my order, but I wasn't quite expecting this.

The sample size is small, so this may just be a fluke. But I expect this will be a good month for sales.

This afternoon, I visited my grandmother's house for a bit of a family gathering; my uncle Jeffrey is visiting briefly from North Carolina. Two of my aunts made appetizers... a baked artichoke dip and some stuffed mushrooms.  and baked a bunch of pizzas using my signature pizza dough. I made one with thin slices of Japanese eggplant, one with yuzu-marinated fennel and a simple olive oil base, and one with shiitake and oyster mushrooms. There was also one with an arugula pesto and some roasted peppers with soft chevre. I don't eat meat, but I made pepperoni pizzas for the carnivorous ones, and I finished with a gorgonzola, pear and caramelized onion pizza.

It was nice to see everyone... I don't see my aunts and uncles very often these days, and I know I'll be incredibly busy until Christmas.

When going on a trip of any duration, I feel compelled to make the best use possible of whatever ingredients remain in the refrigerator. But we ended up eating at Sofrito Rico, a Ballard Puerto Rican restaurant, on Friday night, due to various last minute errands, deliveries, and shoe needs.

So my last chance to use up things before departing was breakfast. Some brown mustard seed and garam masala seasoned potatoes leftover from a night of vaguely Indian cooking caught my eye, as I considered how to use up a bunch of eggs and a bit of remaining fresh mozzarella. The onions and garlic in the potato masala seemed a natural fit.

Aloo Frittata?

If I ever again find myself in the possession of some leftover potato masala, this tweaked spanish omelet/frittata will probably be at the top of my list.

I have been holding on to a jar of German Morellen, or sour cherries, for far too long. I was thinking to incorporate them into or place atop a cheesecake, but the next time I make a cheesecake it will probably be a green tea version. No matter how I reimagine this it is unlikely to require cherries.

I happened to notice that I had about two-thirds of a packet of sweetened kanten (agar-agar), which I must have previously used to gel a cheesecake or torte topping. It turns out that this amount is just about right for four cups of liquid, so I simmered the liquid from my jar of tart cherries and a little extra water with the remaining agar agar and placed the cherries into four small bowls.

When the liquid had simmered suitably, I poured it into the bowls and let it set. Then I got this simple, refreshing dessert. It’s not as sweet as it looks, and it only has the sweetened agar agar, and whatever mysterious things (mostly water and glucose syrup) might have been in the jar of cherries. It sure beats artificially flavored Jello desserts.

OK, chanterelle season is more than over. What can I say? I've been busy.

I made this back in December, so you'll probably need to make something slightly different. Maybe you can substitute some hedgehogs or skip the mushrooms if something suitably foresty isn't available.

All I can say is that this worked. I blanched thinly-sliced golden beets, followed by the beet greens. Then, I dry-fried chanterelles with a bit of salt and fresh dill, feeding them some butter after most of the liquid had boiled off.

I put these on a pizza dough base brushed with olive-oil and garlic. The cheese included a little orange-fennel soft goat cheese and mozzarella.

When the pizza was finished baking, I hit it generously with more fresh dill.

It's not Italian, but it works. I particularly liked the little hints of orange aroma coming from the cheese, but I think other soft chevre would add a nice brightness that would balance out the earthy foundation.

I don’t think I’ve been so optimistic in a long time.

With only a few days of active sales efforts, I’ve had pretty good luck getting new accounts this week. Central Market in Shoreline took delivery of the Matcha Latte today and the Mill Creek location will start carrying it soon as well. A gift shop in Redmond called Wagamama (selfishness?) started selling it as well.

Cafe Zoe in U-District and Aruba in Fremont started serving the Matcha Latte as well.

I faced another set of irritations with a shipping vendor for the new shipment of dragon beard candy. It was frustrating, but it worked out more quickly than the last time we used them. I think I’m likely to dump that vendor because they don’t file papers with the right people when needed and it causes no end of headaches. Fortunately my customs broker has been on top of things and fixes them quickly whenever possible.

I’m not getting enough sleep this week, alas.

Nothing is more comforting than some nice French toast on a weekend morning, even if I do have a full day of work ahead of me. I cut some 1– or 2– day old Essential Bakery baguette into roughly 1 inch thick slices, and dipped each slice into some milk, then into some beaten egg. I dusted the slices with some Chinese-style five spice powder, and grilled them in a buttered pan. I served the toast with some medium amber maple syrup and a few slices of banana.

My Thanksgiving weekend was no weekend… I spent a lot of time doing supermarket demos. I hope they pay off.

This week we had another nabemono craving, this time a reprise of my last kimchi soon dubu jjigae, with a couple of tweaks. I made it with some shirataki, or konnyaku jelly noodles.

The next day we made a bibimbap, but in a clay pot, rather than stone. I don’t have a dol sot (stone bowl) handy, but I have a huge clay pot that works atop a gas burner… you’ll recognize it from most of my nabemono. As an alternative, it works reasonably well, but the “okoge” (crusted rice) is harder to extract because we fear breaking the pot. We were abe to cook the rice reasonably well, though this time, I think we had a touch too much water in the rice.

We made the bibimbap with some dotori muk, which I had previously used as a side dish dressed with sesame oil and soy sauce.

This was all fairly easy to prepare, but a fair amount of chopping and shredding was involved in our bibimbap…

Tonight, we had Hiromi’s carefully crafted osechi meal, which I can’t take any credit for, except for the photography, and a last minute run for some missing ingredients… I’ll post it shortly.

These asparagus-like treats, sometimes called garlic sprouts, seem pervasive in the summertime in Seattle farmer's markets.

They apparently come from only a small number of varieties of garlic. I really like them, but I've found them slightly temperamental to cook: they seem to transform from slightly-too-hard to hopelessly mushy in mere seconds.

This time I managed to get the texture just about right.

When I'm giving them a more Japanese treatment, I tend to blanch them before using them, which helps keep the texture firm and the color brilliant.

This time, though, I simply sauteed the garlic stems of the scapes in olive oil with a generous pinch of salt, added some walnut pieces, and, toward the end of their time on the stove, I added the upper bulbs to the pan and poured in some vermouth. The bulbs take less time to cook than the rest of the vegetable, and tend to suffer the most from overcooking, so they should be cooked until just tender enough to enjoy.

I've bought garlic scapes in supermarkets in Japan, where they are called ninniku-me, but they are nearly always sold with the bulb cropped off. I think that's probably because the visual appeal has a longer shelf-life; the tips turn brown much earlier than the rest of the scapes.

Garlic scapes require only minimal seasoning: they are both an aromatic and a vegetable in one. If you take advantage of that attribute, you can have an excellent side dish on the table in just about three minutes...