Recipes and Restaurants with the Zen Twist…..

Cream Pan – Filled Roll

Posted on January 24, 2012 by admin

The Cream Pan is one of Japan’s most traditional dishes but one which is not Japanese in origin. It was almost certainly introduced to Japan by early Portuguese missionaries some 400 years ago and if the missionaries couldn’t make their religion stick, this cream-filled roll certainly struck a chord.

Cream Pan filled roll

It’s a slightly complex recipe – not so much in the cooking but in the shaping of the dough into the required shape, but stick with it and you’ll be well rewarded.

You will need the following:

For the dough…..

200g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg
1 1/2 tbsp butter
4 tsp sugar

For the yeast…..

2 tsp active dry yeast
120 ml warm water
pinch of sugar

For the cream…..

240ml full cream milk
60g sugar
pinch of salt
2 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
2 large egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

To make the cream:

Leaving the vanilla and small amount of egg wash to one side, gently heat and mix all the ingredients in a saucepan for several minutes until it starts to boil and thicken.
Take the mixture off the heat and finely strain the result into a bowl and slowly mix in the vanilla extract.
Cover the cream with cling film and let it cool.

To make the dough and yeast:

Part One

In a small container mix together the warm water, yeast and sugar until the yeast has dissolved and mixture thickens.
Whisk the egg and strain it to remove any lumps.
Now use an electric mixer to blend the dough ingredients, the whisked egg and the yeast mixture until it reaches a doughy consistency.
When you are able to knead it, spend at least 10 minutes doing so until it reaches an elastic consistency.
Form the dough into a large ball and place it in a bowl lined with butter. Cover with cling film.
Leave for up to 1.5 hours or until the dough is around twice its original size.

Part Two

Bring the dough back on to a floured work surface and allow it to deflate.

Use a rolling pin to form a square of about 9 x 11 inches.

With the longer side of the square facing you, fold the top third (3 inches) down and then fold over again so you have a triple thickness length.

Cut this length into 8 equal chunks and for each one, do the following -

Create a ball and use a rolling pin to create a 5 inch circle.

Place 1/8 of the cream mixture into the centre of the dough and fold the disk in half, gently sealing the edges. If you like, use an implement to indent the edge to give the finished product that ‘Cornish Pasty’ look.

When you have eight completed items, cover them with cling film again and allow them to rise until they have doubled in size as before.

Now use a small brush to coat the dough with the egg wash you saved from earlier and place them in a pre-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) for around 10 minutes or until they become brown.

Remove from the oven and allow them to cool. That’s it!

Azuki Koshi An (Azuki Bean Paste)

Posted on January 6, 2012 by admin

Azuki Bean paste is not a whole meal in itself unless you really, really like the taste of this traditional food item. It’s actually a fundamental part of many Japanese sweet desserts and is prepared in two manners; one is Tsubu An, made with the bean skin and the other is the focus of today’s recipe, Koshi An, made without the skin of the bean. Removing the skin provides the finished paste with a less rich but smoother taste. In Europe or the United States you can find pre-boiled Azuki beans in Asian grocery stores and some health food shops.

Azuki Beans

Ingredients:

30 ounces of Azuki beans
4 fluid ounces (fl. oz.)/1/2 cup of water
8 ounces of suger
2 teaspoons of salt

Preparation Method:

To start with, empty the tin(s) of beans into a strainer to get rid of the water.
Now place the dried Azuki beans into a mixing bowl and add half the water (2 fl. oz.). Ideally using an electric mixer, mix the beans until there are no lumps remaining and you are left with a smooth paste.
Place the resulting substance into a saucepan and add the remaining water. Using a low heat, bring the beans to the boil, stirring often to maintain the consistency.
As the first few bubbles appear, place a saucepan lid on the top but check the mixture every so often so you can remove the pieces of bean skin and any other impurities.
Now add the sugar and the salt, making sure to keep stirring the mixture until everything is mixed in . Eventually it will become thicker and sticky so remove it from the heat and allow it to cool off.
One it has cooled down, it is now ready for use! Make sure you keep it in the fridge when not in use; alternatively it can be frozen for use in the future.

Azuki Bean paste

Now it can be added to a wide range of Japanese desserts such as pancakes, ice cream and fruit.

Posted in Dessert Recipes, Zen Recipes | Leave a comment

The Concept of Zen

Posted on December 8, 2011 by admin

When we write week in, week out about Zen Restaurants, Zen Cafe, food and the like, we rely on a type of contemporary interpretation of what Zen is. Why do we apply the label to drinks, meals, certain types of businesses and other material objects? It’s not an easy question to answer other than calling it an indefinable quality with some sort of Oriental influence.

So it’s probably fair to explain exactly what Zen is from a more prosaic level and then you can make your own decision as to whether it applies to what we write about.

The term Zen derives of course from Zen Buddhism, a branch of Mahayana Buddhism which can be dated all the way back to 7th century China. The development of this school is credited to a South Indian prince or possibly a Persian who became a monk called Bodhidharma. Making his way to China around the 7th century, he began to develop his own form of Mahayana Buddhism. Records from the period are sketchy but Chán is understood to have been the early name for this new school; over the millennia it has morphed into the term Zen.

Bodhidharma scroll

The link between India, China and Central Asia is a fascinating one in this period. When trading between the regions began as borders were crossed, the development of the Silk Road began; the vast network of routes that brought merchants and their goods from one region to another. It was along these routes that Indian monks originally brought the message of Buddhism to the settlements and towns along the way – reaching as far as China in the decades before Bodhidharma made the journey.

Evidence of Buddhist art and other religious relics have been discovered at ancient sites in many places along the Silk Road, most notably in sites which border the western edge of the Taklamakan desert in western China.

So when you eat a ‘Zen’ labelled meal or ‘Zen’ denoted drink, ponder the origins of the term and why we describe it as such.

Posted in Zen Facts | Tagged 7th century, bodhidharma, chan, china, indian price, mahayana buddhism, zen, zen buddhism, zen concepts, zen food | Leave a comment

DinTaiFung Restaurants

Posted on November 22, 2011 by admin

A slight change from the norm in this article and we’re not writing about just one place, we’re talking about a business which date back to 1958 in Taiwan.

Starting at the beginning though, Bingyi Yang was a Chinese national who fled the Chinese Civil War in 1948 and made his way to Taiwan, along with many others. He found work at the HengTaiFung cooking oils store and was soon in charge of the accounting side of the business. Unfortunately by the time the now married Yang was 31, the cooking oils store was out of business.

DinTaiFung

Consequently Yang and his wife (Penmai Lai) decided to start their own oils business and named it DinTaiFung. The name was a contraction of the name of the cooking oils store and the oils wholesaler (DinMei Oils). They soon managed to obtain a shop front on Xinyi Road and this remains their main restaurant site to this day. When the cooking oils business began to slow down with the introduction of tinned salad oil in the early 1980s, Yang and his wife knew they would have to diversify.

Steamed dumplings were the answer and half of the shop on Xinyi Road was given over to

Steamed Pork Dumplings

producing these delicacies. The high quality of the produce soon meant that without any advertising, Yang and Lei were immensely popular and word of mouth brought many customers to their shop. This was the beginning of an Asia wide brand which is still going from strength to strength today. The Xinyi Road restaurant still has the original characters in place on the shop front.

It wasn’t until 1996 that expansion began outside Taiwan with the Shinjuku Restaurant in

Drunken Chicken

Tokyo although by this time the New York Times had named them as one of the world’s top ten gourmet restaurants. Three more opened in Japan within the next few years – Yokohama, Kumamoto and Nagoya before their appeal extended to Los Angeles in the United States in 2000.

We don’t need to list every single restaurant here but suffice to say there are dozens in Asia plus the six or so branches in the United States and three in Australia. Us Europeans will have to wait a bit longer to sample the delights of DinTaiFung.

So what’s the food like then? It’s Asian cuisine but absolutely top quality, gourmet

Eight Treasure Glutinous Rice

cuisine. The dumplings are still immensely popular and there are nine different varieties; the steamed pork dumplings are a personal favourite. There’s a wide variety of rice and noodle dishes, we particularly like the braised beef noodle soup and the fired rice with eggs and shrimp. For an unusual ‘special’, you can’t go too far wrong with the ‘drunken chicken’.

Ready for a dessert? It’s strictly Asian here and although some of the dishes may not look like desserts from a Western perspective, all of them are well worth a try. On our last visit to the Bangkok branch at Central World we had a go at the superb ‘ eight treasure glutinous rice’. This is an entire brand with the Zen seal of approval

Posted in Zen Restaurants | Tagged asian cuisine, bangkok, bingyi yang, din tai fung, dintaifung, hong kong, penmei lai, singapore, taipei, taiwan, top ten gourmet restaurants, zen cafes, zen restaurants | Leave a comment

Cafe del Mar, Ibiza

Posted on October 19, 2011 by admin

Anyone heading to Ibiza for a certain type of holiday will be familiar with the legendary location that is the Cafe del Mar. It’s located in Sant Antoni de Portmany (better known to tourists as San Antonio) and has become world famous for it’s laid back atmosphere and of course it’s world famous sunsets.

San Antonio was the destination of choice for the first tourists in the 1970s and in 1978 three gentlemen from the Canary Islands arrived and immediately saw the potential for the spot on the rocks on the West side of the island. Not much expense was spared in the decoration of the new venue and the idea was to fit the space and the music to complement the location and the sunset.

This was no shack on the beach and after building began in 1979, it took almost two years to complete the development; the Cafe del Mar finally opened it’s doors on 20th June 1980. It was an almost immediate success, drawing tourists and locals from all over the island to the evening sunset ‘events’ and this necessitated the need for some music to complement the environment.

Cafe del Mar

By necessity the music was ambient, a nightly combination of blues, jazz and classical music which soon attracted famous musicians prepared to join the party. As time progressed, the late 1980s saw the transformation of Ibiza into a dance music destination and the Cafe del Mar followed suit, inviting guest DJs and using it’s own residents to spin the vinyl and provide the chilled out accompaniment to the evening’s sunsets.

For many years, the cafe sold it’s own session tapes almost from the DJ booth (I have a 1994 version myself). When CD production became easier towards the end of the 1990s, the cafe began to sell it’s mixes as a separate income stream and dozes of volumes have now been mixed and released. It could even be argued that the term ‘Balearic ambient’ originated from this famous location.

For fans of the Zen culture, the Cafe del Mar should be everyone’s bucket list.

Posted in Zen Bars, Zen Cafes | Tagged balearic ambient, cafe del mar, cafe del mar history, chill out, ibiza, laid back, san antonio, sant antoni, Zen Bar, zen cafe | Leave a comment