My 1st Coffee Roasting

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I bought a bag of green coffee beans and I actually roasted 100g of them last night myself.  

First, I set aside the "bad" ones and pre-heated a stainless steel pod to 200 Celsius.  Yeah, I used Celsius in this case because it was easier than 392 Fahrenheit.  Then, I poured the beans into the pod and started shaking the pod.  I turned to high heat for my electrical stove at first and dialed it down to medium when the inside of the pod reached 150 degree.  I stopped at the peek of the first crack, ie. light roast, and when the pod reached 200 degree.  The whole roasting process took about 12 mins.  I then immediately poured the beans into a stainless steel colander for them to cool down, followed by bringing them outside to blow away the coffee chaff.

After picking out the obvious bad ones, I was left with 86.3g of medium-roasted coffee beans.

Today, I ground 12g of the coffee beans, the crema was incredible (see the video above).  The coffee was sweet at first then turned sour; I need to dial in that coffee for sure.

Overall, it was fun and eye-opening for me.  I have about 300g of green coffee beans left and I'll definitely try to roast them differently.  One thing for sure, I'll get another kind of coffee beans in the future since the coffee beans I bought were too small.  Stay tuned.

Espresso Making

I was recently sucked into the making of espresso coffee and bought the following equipment so far:

• Hibrew H10B
• Neretva Burr Coffee Grinder
• 51mm Bottomless Portafilter

I also bought some gadgets from other stores.  The equivalent can be found from Amazon as well:

• 51mm Espresso Tamper
• 51mm Dosing Funnel with Magnetic
• WDT Tool

I was very excited to make an expresso with those equipment.  The Youtube video above showed one of my first few attempts and it clearly exhibited some channeling issues; so much room to improve. 

I also received my first unroasted coffee beans today:

• Unroasted coffee beans from Ethiopian Yirgacheffe

And I'll try to roast my own coffee.  Stay tuned.

Matcha (green tea) Latte

 

I had been hearing a lot about the benefits of matcha; most importantly, the process of harvesting it.  Farmers put shades over the green tea plants weeks before harvesting them to increase their chlorophyll. content.  Then, the green tea leafs are picked, steamed, dried before being ground into fine powder.  The best matcha will be ground on a traditional grinding stone and it would take 1 hour to grind just 30g of matcha.  That makes me appreciate matcha even more.

So, at home, I was trying to make some matcha latte with 3 layers: the bottom layer is usually syrup, the middle is the matcha and the top layer is whipped milk.  To get creative, especially in the hot summer, I usually add ice cubes on top of the syrup.  Sometime I also add grass jelly after the ice.  To make the latte more appearing, I also decorate my latte with a cherry or strawberry on the edge of the glass.

Hmm..., a little sweet but not too sweet, refreshing, ice-cold and caffeinated; a perfect combo!

Beef Wellington V2

 

Last year, I tried to make Beef Wellington for the first time of my life, it did not go as well as I hoped for mainly because I was using the wrong kind of beef.  This year, I used a brisket, sliced it and chopped it a little to tenderize it.  Then, I seasoned it with salt and black peppers.  The meat, surprisingly, tasted very well.  Another improvement was I made enough dough which covered the whole meat and preserved the juice.  Overall, I was very happy about the outcome.

Beef Noodle Soup with Wontons

Since I had some leftover soup from the beef noodle, I made myself some beef noodle soup with wontons.  The skin, bought from an Asian supermarket, was mixed with green veggies, hence the green color.  Yummy!

Happy Mother's Day with Taiwanese Beef Noodle

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.  

Today, I made Taiwanese Beef Noodle again to celebrate this special day.  In my previous blog, many readers had thought I was making dry beef noodle since there was no soup in the pictures.  The fact is I didn't have enough soup, so, I only put a little soup in the bowl and the close-up pictures didn't help either.  Anyway, I was sure to make enough soup today.  Last but not least, I used beef shanks today and I simmered them for 2 hours.  A quote from someone who had the noodle: "I'm not going to lie, the beef noodle is frigging good!"

Taiwanese Beef Noodle (台式紅燒牛肉麵)

 

I always wanted to try to make Taiwanese beef noodle, a popular dish in Taiwan.  The beef is very tender and the soup is very flavorful.  So, I tried today, except I was running short on garlic.  Fear not, I used red scallions and celery instead.  Basically, whatever leftover in the fridge, LOL.

Of course, instead of Chinese noodle or pulling the noodle myself, I was using the Italian pasta which was chewy and perfectly served as beef noodle.  The end results were not disappointed.  Yum!

Youtube:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1m8rnjk2w
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Md4wYKJDU