Wholesome Bites

A couple of weekends ago I was at Ikea...one of my favourite shopping places, I spotted a set of lovely animal-shaped cookie cutters. It was love-at-first-sight. Thank goodness the price is very reasonable and I didn't feel guilty having to add them to my collection of cookie cutters.

If you happen to read my previous post on Chocolate Chips drop Cookies, you would have known the reason why the list under 'My Cookie Jar' category at the side bar will be getting longer and longer ;) Yet, I find it a challenging task to look for cookie recipes that would promise snacks that are wholesome, nutritious and at the same time taste as delicious as they look. Fortunately, I have cultivated a good habit of keeping recipes...anything that looks good, low fat and requires less sugar will get to find a place either in my recipe folders or my notebooks. I know, I will get to try out the recipes some day.


I managed to dig out this Wholemeal Cookies recipe from my stack of recipes and after a quick run through of the instructions, I though it would be very suitable to use my newly acquired set of cutters for these Rolled cookies.

For rolled cookies, the cookie dough MUST have the right consistency. If the dough is too dry, it will crack and crumble easily...if it is too wet, the dough will be too sticky, making it really difficult to roll and cut out the cookies, and it will spread too much during baking. It was only after adding in the flour mixture that I realised this recipe produced very very wet and sticky dough. I was quite certain that I had measured the ingredients correctly and followed the steps very closely. I followed the instructions to gather the mixture to form a dough, placed it in a plastic bag and left it to chill in the fridge. While the dough was getting firmed up, I took the time to look for ways to overcome the problems that I was very sure I gonna faced.

I was lucky to be able to find all the solutions from one of my cookie bibles. To prevent the dough from sticking to the rolling pin, it is best to roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment paper or clear plastic sheets (cut outs from plastic bags). This is something I have been practising for quite sometime already especially when making pastries for tarts. The next tip is something new though. After rolling, slide the dough (do not remove the parchment papers or plastic sheets) onto a baking tray and leave it to chill in the fridge again for another 15 ~ 30 mins or so. When the dough is firm enough, it will be much easier to stamp out the cookies.

I have also learned that there is one extra step after stamping out the cookies, ie to chill the cut out doughs again for at least 30 mins before baking. This helps to retain their shape and prevent the cookies from spreading too much especially if it is a wet dough.


Well, I followed the above tips and it took me a lot more time than I had expected. I find it quite troublesome having to chill the dough in between rolling and cutting out. Even after chilling, the dough started to soften and got sticky again before I could finish stamping out one tray. It was a nightmare trying to transfer the soft and fragile cut-out dough to the baking tray. The bigger cutters gave me more headache than the the smaller one. Nevertheless, it was a good learning experience, and having gone through the hassles of making them, the finished cookies didn't disappoint me. They were so GOOD, very crispy and crunchy! I really like the nutty texture thanks to the wholemeal flour. These cookies are certainly worth the extra efforts! My younger boy loves this healthy snack to bits (literally!), he would pick up every single cookie crumbs from the table and put it into his mouth. The cookies were so well received that they were all gone within 3 days. I will certainly be making these wholesome bites again and again...but the next time, I would probably just roll them into small discs instead of sweating it out with the cookie cutters ;)


Wholemeal Cookies

Ingredients:

100g butter, softened at room temperature
80g caster sugar
1 egg (about 60g with shell), lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
150g wholemeal flour


Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180degC. Line baking trays with parchment paper.
2. With a wooden spoon or electric mixer, cream butter and caster sugar in a mixing bowl until the mixture turns pale and fluffy.
3. Beat in the egg gradually. Mix well after each addition. Add in vanilla extract, mix well.
4. Sift the flour and baking powder over the mixture, add the wholemeal flour. Fold in with a spatula. Mix and gather to form a soft dough. Lightly knead the dough for a few seconds until smooth. (Do not overwork the dough or the butter will start to melt and the gluten will develop giving the cookies a tough texture.)
5. Shape the dough into a ball then flatten slightly into a round disc. (This will make it easier to roll out.) Wrap in cling wrap or a place it in a plastic bag (to prevent the dough from drying out) and leave in the fridge for about 30 mins or until firm. (If the dough is left in the fridge for too long, it will harden, if this happens, leave it in room temperature for a few mins until it is soft enough to roll out.)
6. Between two sheets of plastic sheets or parchment paper, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 5mm. After rolling, leave the plastic sheets/parchment paper in place and slide the roll out dough into a baking tray and leave in the fridge for about 10-15mins or until firm. (As this dough is rather sticky even after rolling out, by chilling the dough it will be easier to stamp out the cookies.)
7. Dip cookie cutters into some flour and stamp out cookies. Transfer cut-out cookies to the prepared baking trays, leave a space of about 1" in between each one. Gather up the scrape and re-roll to make more cookies (repeat step 6 if necessary). Chill the cut-out cookies for at least 30 mins before baking. (This helps to retain their shape.)
8. Bake for about 15-20 mins until the cookies turn pale golden brown. Rotate the baking tray halfway through the cooking time to ensure even browning.
9. Remove the cookies from the oven and leave on the baking tray for 2 ~ 3mins (to allow the cookies to firm up a little) before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe source: 好想为你亲手做出美味的甜点! 检见崎聡美著

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Science of Watchmen, War Films, plus Mira Nair, from YouTube EDU

Film Studies For Free is grateful to Peter Suber of Open Access News for the tip-off that YouTube has launched a new channel to facilitate access to video material submitted by universities and colleges: YouTube EDU.

The new channel makes it much easier than before to search for and access high-quality scholarly material related to film and media studies, FSFF has found. As Wired Campus also reports, 'The new section makes it possible to find out which college-produced video is most popular'.

The winner in the popularity stakes so far just happens to be an interview [embedded above] with a University of Minnesota [physics] professor discussing the science behind the new movie Watchmen.' In the video, Professor James Kakalios discusses how he was asked to add a physics perspective to the upcoming Warner Brothers movie, Watchmen. Kakalios explores how quantum mechanics can explain Dr. Manhattan's super human powers in the film, and how he came to become an expert on the topic of the physics of superheroes (click here to read an excerpt from Kakalios's book on this topic).

Film Studies For Free has browsed further Film Studies highlights from YouTube EDU and embedded two more of its top quality educational videos below:

1. University of California Television Presents 'My Dinner with Alain: War Cinema' (56 mins 41 secs):

Alain J. J. Cohen is a Professor of Comparative Literature at UCSD who specializes in film history. In this program presented at the UCSD Faculty Club, Cohen examines the challenges of war films as a genre. Clips from various films about World Wars I & II, Vietnam, space wars, etc., illustrate how the filmmakers battle with issues of world history, order and chaos, studio budgets, editing techniques and conflicts of interpretation to realize their vision of combat.

2. University of California Television Presents 'Cinema Diaspora: Discussion with Mira Nair' (57 mins 35 secs):

Mira Nair's films, Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, illuminate the ambiguities of the immigrant experience and highlight the conflicts between modern and traditional cultures. She is joined for a discussion of modern cinema by Gayatri Gopinath and Juli Wyman, both of UC Davis.

More about → Science of Watchmen, War Films, plus Mira Nair, from YouTube EDU

Preventing Tooth Decay

Meet Sir Edward Mellanby, the man who discovered vitamin D. Along with his wife, Dr. May Mellanby, he identified dietary factors that control the formation and repair of teeth and bones. He also identified the primary cause of rickets (vitamin D deficiency) and the effect of phytic acid on mineral absorption. Truly a great man! This research began in the 1910s and continued through the 1940s.

What he discovered about tooth and bone formation is profound, disarmingly simple, and largely forgotten. I remember going to the dentist as a child. He told me I had good teeth. I informed him that I tried to eat well and stay away from sweets. He explained to me that I had good teeth because of genetics, not my diet. I was skeptical at the time, and rightly so.

Tooth structure is primarily determined during growth. Well-formed teeth are highly resistant to decay, while poorly-formed teeth are cavity-prone. Drs. Mellanby demonstrated this by showing a strong correlation between tooth enamel defects and cavities in British children. The following graph is drawn from several studies he compiled in the book Nutrition and Disease (1934). "Hypoplastic" refers to enamel that's poorly formed on a microscopic level.
The graph is confusing, so don't worry if you're having a hard time interpreting it. If you look at the blue bar representing children with well-formed teeth, you can see that 77% of them have no cavities, and only 7.5% have severe cavities (a "3" on the X axis). Looking at the green bar, only 6% of children with the worst enamel structure are without cavities, while 74% have severe cavities. Enamel structure is VERY strongly related to cavity prevalence.

What determines enamel structure during growth? Drs. Mellanby identified three dominant factors:

1. The mineral content of the diet
2. The fat-soluble vitamin content of the diet, chiefly vitamin D
3. The availability of minerals for absorption, determined largely by the diet's phytic acid content

Teeth and bones are a mineralized protein scaffold. Vitamin D influences the quality of the protein scaffold that's laid down, and the handling of the elements that mineralize it. For the scaffold to mineralize, the diet has to contain enough minerals, primarily calcium and phosphorus. Vitamin D allows the digestive system to absorb the minerals, but it can only absorb them if they aren't bound by phytic acid. Phytic acid is an anti-nutrient found primarily in unfermented seeds such as grains. So the process depends on getting minerals (sufficient minerals in the diet and low phytic acid) and putting them in the right place (fat-soluble vitamins).

Optimal tooth and bone formation occurs only on a diet that is sufficient in minerals, fat-soluble vitamins, and low in phytic acid. Drs. Mellanby used dogs in their experiments, which it turns out are a good model for tooth formation in humans for a reason I'll explain later. From Nutrition and Disease:

Thus, if growing puppies are given a limited amount of separated [skim] milk together with cereals, lean meat, orange juice, and yeast (i.e., a diet containing sufficient energy value and also sufficient proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins B and C, and salts), defectively formed teeth will result. If some rich source of vitamin D be added, such as cod-liver oil or egg-yolk, the structure of the teeth will be greatly improved, while the addition of oils such as olive... leaves the teeth as badly formed as when the basal diet only is given... If, when the vitamin D intake is deficient, the cereal part of the diet is increased, or if wheat germ [high in phytic acid] replaces white flour, or, again, if oatmeal [high in phytic acid] is substituted for white flour, then the teeth tend to be worse in structure, but if, under these conditions, the calcium intake is increased, then calcification [the deposition of calcium in the teeth] is improved.

Other researchers initially disputed the Mellanbys' results because they weren't able to replicate the findings in rats. It turns out, rats produce the phytic acid-degrading enzyme phytase in their small intestine, so they can extract minerals from unfermented grains better than dogs. Humans also produce phytase, but at levels so low they don't significantly degrade phytic acid. The small intestine of rats has about 30 times the phytase activity of the human small intestine, again demonstrating that humans are not well adapted to eating grains. Our ability to extract minerals from seeds is comparable to that of dogs, which shows that the Mellanbys' results are more applicable to humans than those in rats.

Drs. Mellanby found that the same three factors determine bone quality in dogs as well, which I may discuss in another post.

Is there anything someone with fully formed enamel can do to prevent tooth decay? Drs. Mellanby showed (in humans this time) that not only can tooth decay be prevented by a good diet, it can be almost completely reversed even if it's already present. Dr. Weston Price used a similar method to reverse tooth decay as well. I'll discuss that in my next post.

More about → Preventing Tooth Decay

More Blog Magic

A quickie from Film Studies For Free today just to shout out about two of the best film studies blogs out there which, coincidentally, have very high-quality and worthwhile recent posts on films about duelling magicians:

• David Bordwell has posted Niceties: how classical filmmaking can be at once simple and precise on Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006). He examines, in minute frame-grabbed detail, the varied patternings in Nolan's film. '[S]tudying such microforms is enlightening, Bordwell writes:

It’s a way to understand films as wholes, dynamic constructions that shift their shapes across the time of their unfolding. Moreover, by examining things this closely, we can try to understand not only how this or that film works, but how this or that film relies on principles distinctive of a filmmaking tradition. Consider this another plug for poetics.

• University of Exeter film academic Dan North's blogpost The Last Trick (Jan Švankmajer, 1964) examines the Czech surrealist 's first film Poslední trik pana Schwarcewalldea a pana Edgara as part of his latest research (a larger project on puppetry and cinema). North writes,

this short film is my starting point, and it reveals to me the challenges that lie ahead. Often we have to look carefully at films to come to terms with their idiosyncrasies, but Švankmajer’s work is particularly daunting in its concentration of allegory and allusion. [...] For eleven minutes [of this film], two magicians do battle, and their tricks require a montage of colliding images and a range of animation techniques: the two actors wear giant masks on their heads, probably papier-mâché, making them look like living, stringless marionettes, and Švankmajer manipulates them accordingly. The black backdrop allows a bunraku performance of sorts, with objects appearing to fly and float unaided through space; frame-by-frame animation moves the eyes of the masks; a shot of pixilation makes their bodies flit around the stage in a lightning fast chase. These are endlessly mutable bodies, but there is none of the joyous spectacle of Méliès’ filmed tricks here - the artifice is always signposted, never seamlessly suggestive, and the stolid expressions on the masked faces convey no fun, only procedure and routine. [links added by FSFF]

In addition to this (like Bordwell's) beautifully illustrated post, Dan's blog Spectacular Attractions has also taken up the challenge of Nicholas Rombes' 10 /40 / 70 film criticism exercise (see FSFF's post on this back on March 5). 10/40/70 is, according to Rombes:

[a]n experiment in writing about film: select three different, arbitrary time codes (in this case the 10 minute, 40 minute, and 70 minute mark), freeze the frames, and use that as the guide to writing about the film. No compromise: the film must be stopped at these time codes. What if, instead of freely choosing what parts of the film to address, one let the film determine this? Constraint as a form of freedom.

In recent posts, North has souped up the engine of the original exercise,

using a random number generator to choose three points from which to take my grabs, and then I have a limited amount of time to write a little about each frame. It’s a quick workout for the critical faculties, and hopefully a way of snapping a jaded blogger out of the comfortable routines of selecting only the most appropriate or illustrative images for a piece of writing

The results are both insightful and highly entertaining, as always with North's blog. Film Studies For Free urges you to check them out, as follows:

• Jaws Randomised
• Frankenstein Randomised
• The Bride of Frankenstein Randomised
• This is Spinal Tap Randomised With Two Brains

One last thought, the following movies may not all be about duelling magicians, but does anyone want to write about The Magician (1926), a horror film directed by Rex Ingram, or The Magician (1958), directed by Ingmar Bergman, or The Illusionist (2006), directed by Neil Burger, and make the highly completist Film Studies For Free one very happy blog indeed? Oh and there's the parody Magicians (2007), directed by Andrew O'Connor too. Any takers?

More about → More Blog Magic

Weekday Lunch Express - Hotdog Bento

Once in a while, when my kids got really tired of the usual (equals boring!) weekday lunch meals I prepare for them, I will jazz up a simple hotdog and make it into a kiddy bento lunch.


The good thing about making a hotdog meal is, I can get the kids to get involved. The younger one will butter the buns and arrange the cheese slices, while my older boy helps to pan fry the cheese sausages.

We usually top the sausages with ketchup or chili sauce and some mayonnaise. This time round we sprinkled it with some leftover bacon bits. As for the sides, it would be anything that we can find in the fridge. Usually it will be just fruits or I'll make some simple salad to go with it. The kids get to decide on the 'treats' to go into the bento...either jelly, yoghurt, sour bears gummy candies or even cookies. A bottle of vitagen or a glass of ribena will complete the meal.


As for my share, I like to top the hotdog with my favourite hot & spicy salsa sauce. This must be one of the easiest and delicious meal, yet, I won't make it an everyday food as it is best to restrict the amount of processed food that goes into our diet.

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More Thoughts on the Glycemic Index

In the last post, I reviewed the controlled trials on the effect of the glycemic index (GI) of carbohydrate foods on health. I concluded that there is not much evidence that a low GI diet is better for health than a high GI diet.

It is true that for the "average" individual the GI of carbohydrate foods can affect the glucose and insulin response somewhat, even in the context of an actual meal. If you compare two meals of very different GI, the low GI meal will cause less insulin secretion and cause less total blood glucose in the plasma over the course of the day (although the differences in blood glucose may not be large in all individuals).

But is that biologically significant? In other words, do those differences matter when it comes to health? I would argue probably not, and here's why: there's a difference between post-meal glucose and insulin surges within the normal range, and those that occur in pathological conditions such as diabetes and insulin resistance. Chronically elevated insulin is a marker of metabolic dysfunction, while post-meal insulin surges are not (although glucose surges in excess of 140 mg/dL indicate glucose intolerance). Despite what you may hear from some sectors of the low-carbohydrate community, insulin surges do not necessarily lead to insulin resistance. Just ask a Kitavan. They get 69% of their 2,200 calories per day from high-glycemic starchy tubers and fruit (380 g carbohydrate), with not much fat to slow down digestion. Yet they have low fasting insulin, very little body fat and an undetectable incidence of diabetes, heart attack and stroke. That's despite a significant elderly population on the island.

Furthermore, in the 4-month GI intervention trial I mentioned last time, they measured something called glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c). HbA1c is a measure of the amount of blood glucose that has "stuck to" hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells. It's used to determine a person's average blood glucose concentration over the course of the past few weeks. The higher your HbA1c, the poorer your blood glucose control, the higher your likelihood of having diabetes, and the higher your cardiovascular risk. The low GI group had a statistically significant drop in their HbA1c value compared to the high GI group. But the difference was only 0.06%, a change that is biologically meaningless.

OK, let's take a step back. The goal of thinking about all this is to understand what's healthy, right? Let's take a look at how carbohydrate foods are consumed by cultures that rarely suffer from obesity or metabolic disease. Cultures that rely heavily on carbohydrate generally fall into three categories: they eat cooked starchy tubers, they grind and cook their grains, or they rely on grains that become very soft when cooked. In the first category, we have Africans, South Americans, Polynesians and Melanesians (including the Kitavans). In the second, we have various Africans, Europeans (including the villagers of the Loetschental valley), Middle Easterners and South Americans. In the third category, we have Asians, Europeans (the oat-eating residents of the outer Hebrides) and South Americans (quinoa-eating Peruvians).

The pattern here is one of maximizing GI, not minimizing it. That's not because high GI foods are inherently superior, but because traditional processing techniques that maximize the digestibility of carbohydrate foods also tend to increase their GI. I believe healthy cultures around the world didn't care about the glycemic index of foods, they cared about digestibility and nutritional value.

The reason we grind grains is simple. Ground grains are digested more easily and completely (hence the higher GI).  Furthermore, ground grains are more effective than intact grains at breaking down their own phytic acid when soaked, particularly if they're allowed to ferment. This further increases their nutritional value.

The human digestive system is delicate. Cows can eat whole grass seeds and digest them using their giant four-compartment stomach that acts as a fermentation tank. Humans that eat intact grains end up donating them to the waste treatment plant. We just don't have the hardware to efficiently extract the nutrients from cooked whole rye berries, unless you're willing to chew each bite 47 times. Oats, quinoa, rice, beans and certain other starchy seeds are exceptions because they're softened sufficiently by cooking.

Grain consumption and grinding implements appear simultaneously in the archaeological record. Grinding has always been used to increase the digestibility of tough grains, even before the invention of agriculture when hunter-gatherers were gathering wild grains in the fertile crescent. Some archaeologists consider grinding implements one of the diagnostic features of a grain-based culture. Carbohydrate-based cultures have always prioritized digestibility and nutritional value over GI.

Finally, I'd like to emphasize that some people don't have a good relationship with carbohydrate. Diabetics and others with glucose intolerance should be very cautious with carbohydrate foods. The best way to know how you deal with carbohydrate is to get a blood glucose meter and use it after meals. For $70 or less, you can get a cheap meter and 50 test strips that will give you a very good idea of your glucose response to typical meals (as opposed to a glucose bomb at the doctor's office). Jenny Ruhl has a tutorial that explains the process. It's also useful to pay attention to how you feel and look with different amounts of carbohydrate in your diet.

More about → More Thoughts on the Glycemic Index

Reports from the E-Repositories #1: eScholarship Initiative/California Digital Library

Image from November (Hito Steyerl, 2004, DVD, 27 min)

Film Studies For Free has donned its fetching explorer's hat to check out some excellent university e-repositories for research and scholarship.

In the first of a series of posts reporting on its findings, here are five of the best, freely-accessible, film-related items that FSFF found on its e-travels, today courtesy of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library, served by the individual units of the University of California:

• Laure Astourian (2008) “Bridging Fiction and Documentary in Godard’s Notre Musique”, The Berkeley Undergraduate Journal : Vol. 21: No. 2, Article 4 (thesis adviser: Ulysse Dutoit) (abstract: This paper is a close analysis of Jean-Luc Godard’s 2004 film, Notre Musique. Its primary focus is the implications of Godard’s blending of documentary footage with staged footage. Among the examples of documentary and narrative blurring, Godard stages an interview with an internationally known poet, Mahmoud Darwish, and though the pretext is completely false, the exchange that takes place is honest and potent. Aside from the famous personages who play themselves, the film’s other main characters are actors. They insert themselves seamlessly through events that actually took place in Sarajevo (i.e. that were not planned for the shooting of the film). I believe this technique echoes Godard’s belief that people have faith in the imaginary, and doubt reality. Even though the narrative curve is atypical--there is no climax, and the two main characters never meet--it offers that which the spectator needs in order to submit himself or herself to a film: the imaginary. Thanks to the lens of narrativity, the varied documentary subjects (the Israeli/Palestine conflict, the symbolic rebuilding of the Mostar Bridge, the Native American plight, the future of digital filmmaking) whose philosophical links would otherwise not be considered are conjoined into a field where realities point to imaginaries and vice versa. Throughout the film, the characters acknowledge the inability of images and words to represent certain atrocities, and strange way by which imaginary representations are at times more believable than the truth.)
  
• Deniz Göktürk (2005) “Yüksel Yavuz’s Kleine Freiheit / A Little Bit of Freedom”, TRANSIT, Vol. 1: No. 1, Article 50915 (abstract: Yüksel Yavuz’s internationally celebrated film Kleine Freiheit / A Little Bit of Freedom (2003), tells the story of a friendship between two young men, both of them illegal immigrants living in Altona, one of them a Kurd from Turkey. Baran’s application for asylum has been declined, and he has therefore fallen into an illegal status in Germany. That means that he does not have basic rights, such as health care or job protection. He works as a delivery boy in a relative’s kebab restaurant. When he has a toothache, they try to cure him in the kitchen by sticking a hot skewer into his mouth. His scream leads over into the first montage sequence of a bicycle trip. This triple exposure sequence conveys a gripping cross-section of the neighborhood by superimposing shots of city traffic with shots of the various locations to which kebab is delivered, ranging from a Turkish bakery to a construction site and a brothel. The sequence conveys a sense of multilayered locality, which is underscored by the music of Mercan Dede. Despite the excess of mobility displayed in these images, the characters remain confined within the St. Pauli neighborhood throughout the film. Taking advantage of a “Germany in transit,” Yavuz’s cinematically impressive engagement with locations in Hamburg raises a whole range of interesting questions such as: Where is home? How are transnational mobility and traumatic memory represented in cinema? Do immigrants live in a “parallel world”? Do they care about integration into German society? Do they form new inter-ethnic alliances in this new place? How do questions of race and gender come into play? And where are German (and global) spectators positioned in relation to immigrant spaces and networks?)
  
• Kathleen Sclafani (2006) “Finding Home in a Liminal Space: Exile and Return in Andreas Dresen’s Halbe Treppe ”, TRANSIT: Vol. 2: No. 1, Article 61212 (abstract: In his film Halbe Treppe, Andreas Dresen uses stylistic elements and modes of production similar to exilic filmmakers, as described by Naficy in his book An Accented Cinema, in an attempt to portray both a sense of exile and a desire for freedom in his characters. Since exile is inextricably bound-up in questions of both homeland and identity, the film invites comparison not only to exilic cinema but also to certain aspects of New German Cinema, particularly issues of German identity that many critics argue have been too often ignored by other young German filmmakers. By emphasizing the importance of Frankfurt/Oder as the setting for his characters’ experience of exile, Dresen creates a connection between identity and “place” that encourages the spectator to reflect upon the traditional notion of “Heimat” and how it might be re-imagined in a new multicultural, unified Germany.)
  
• Dean K. Simonton, 'Film awards as indicators of cinematic creativity and achievement: A quantitative comparison of the Oscars and six alternatives', Creativity Research Journal. 16 (2-3), pp. 163-172 (abstract: Although film awards are often taken as indicating the creative achievements that underlie outstanding motion pictures, critics have questioned whether such honors represent a consensus regarding cinematic contributions. Nevertheless, a strong agreement was demonstrated by investigating 1,132films released between 1975 and 2002 that had received at least 1 award or award nomination from 7 distinct sources (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, New York Film Critics Circle, National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, and Los Angeles Film Critics Association). The results indicated that (a) almost all award categories exhibited a conspicuous consensus, the Oscars providing the best single indicator of that agreement; (b) Oscar awards provided meaningful information about cinematic creativity and achievement beyond that provided by Oscar nominations alone; (c) awards bestowed by the 7 organizations corresponded with more specialized awards granted by guilds and societies, with the Oscars usually providing the best correspondence; and (d) awards correlated positively with later movie guide ratings, the correlations being especially large in the categories of picture, direction, screenplay, and acting. The findings were discussed in terms of whether the awards can be considered to be indicative of cinematic creativity.)
  
• Hito Steyerl (2005) “November: A Film Treatment”, TRANSIT: Vol. 1: No. 1, Article 50914 (abstract: In the eighties Hito Steyerl shot a feminist martial arts film on Super-8 stock. Her best friend Andrea Wolf played the lead role, that of a woman warrior dressed in leather and mounted on a motorcycle. The engagement expressed in the formal grammar of exploitation films later became Wolf’s political praxis: She went to fight alongside the PKK in the Kurdish regions between Turkey and northern Iraq, where she was killed in 1998. Now honored by Kurds as an “immortal revolutionary,” her portrait is carried at demonstrations.
  In November Hito Steyerl examines the spectrum of interrelationships between territorial power politics (as practiced by Turkey in Kurdistan with the support of Germany) and individual forms of resistance. Her memories and accounts of Wolf’s life provoke the filmmaker to engage in a fundamental reflexion: She comes to understand how fact and fiction are intertwined in the global discourse. Her friend’s picture as a revolutionary pin-up would equally connect with either Asian genre cinema or a private video document. If October is the hour of revolution, November is the time of common sense afterward, though it is also the time of madness – Hito Steyerl considers from this perspective a relationship which began with a pose, and Andrea Wolf took its implications so seriously that she was no longer satisfied with symbolic action. Wolf chose the Other of filmmaking, which was what made her into a true “icon”.

More about → Reports from the E-Repositories #1: eScholarship Initiative/California Digital Library

Mini Melon-pans

These are not ice creams...


and they are not muffins either.


They are actually mini melon pans...sweet bread buns covered with a layer of crispy pastry dough. Besides the plain buns, there are also green tea and chocolate ones. The original recipe calls for baking 3 mini buns in a special mould. Since I don't have such moulds, I baked them separately in my muffin cups (it seems like I take forever to finish using up all my muffin liners!). The finished buns looked almost like muffins or scoops of ice creams :)

I could have added too much flour to the pastry dough, and as a result, the dough was quite dry and crumbled easily while I try to wrap it over the bread dough. Upon baking, the pastry crust was a bit too hard :(


Fortunately, the texture of the bread was fine, it was soft and tasted good on it's own. I like the green tea version best, and as usual, my kids prefer the chocolate ones.




Ingredients
(makes 12 mini buns)

Dough Ingredients:
160g bread flour
30g cake flour
25g caster sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp instant yeast
10g milk powder
1 egg yolk
100ml water
15g unsalted butter

1/2 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp green tea powder

Pastry Ingredients:
45g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
40g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
10g milk powder
70g cake flour

1/2 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp green tea powder


Method:

1. Prepare Bread Dough - Place water, egg yolk, salt, sugar, bread flour, cake flour, milk powder and yeast in the pan of the bread machine (according to the sequence as stated in the instruction manual of your bread machine). Select the Dough function of the bread machine and press start. After about 8mins of kneading (the ingredients should form a smooth dough by now), add in the 15g of butter. Let the machine continue to knead the dough. After the kneading cycle has stopped (20mins), Stop and Restart the machine. Continue to let the machine knead for another 10mins.
2. Stop the machine and remove dough from the bread pan. Divide the dough into 3 equal portions (about 120g each). Take one portion of the dough and knead in cocoa powder, until the cocoa powder is fully incorporated into the dough. Repeat the same for the other dough with green tea powder. Leave the third dough plain. Shape each dough into a smooth round and place in separate mixing bowls, cover with cling wrap and let them rise till double in volume about 50 ~ 90mins.
3. Prepare Pastry Dough - With an electric mixer or a manual whisk, cream butter & icing sugar till pale and fluffy. Add in egg yolk gradually and beat well. Add in milk powder and cake flour. Fold with a spatula and gather the mixture to form a dough. Divide the pastry into 3 equal portions. Knead in cocoa powder, green tea powder separately into two of the portions, leave the 3rd portion plain. Divide each pastry dough into 4 smaller portions. You should have 12 doughs in total. Cover with cling wrap and leave it aside for 10 mins.
4. When ready, remove bread doughs and give each dough a few light kneading on a lightly floured work surface. Press out the trapped air as your knead. Divide each dough further into 4 smaller portions (about 30g each) and shape into balls.
5. Flatten each pastry dough into a round disc. Wrap each bread dough with it's corresponding pastry dough. Wrap the pastry dough over about 2/3 of the bread dough, leaving the bottom 1/3 unwrapped.
6. Place doughs in paper muffin cups, cover loosely with a damp cloth or cling wrap and let dough proof for 25 - 30mins or till the dough reaches almost to the rim of the paper cup.
7. Bake at preheated oven at 190 degC for about 18 mins. Rotate the buns halfway into baking to ensure even browning. Remove from oven and let cool on wire rack

Recipe adapted from 孟老师的100道面包

More about → Mini Melon-pans

WHO LOVES THE CRUSTIES? GREENSPAN'S BANANA BUNDT CAKE

Dorie Greenspan's Banana Bundt Cake: adapted for loaf pans and made even yummier (in my opinion, anyway)


Not another Banana Bread recipe, you say? Well, you know I've been searching for the perfect banana bread or banana cake recipe. It has to be full of banana-y flavour and must keep well...and every bit of the crust has to be edible and not rock hard.

My go-to Banana Bread recipe is still one of my favourites and never fails to meet my expectations. The ingredient list is brief and the technique is quick (hey, it's a quickbread after all). However, my mother doesn't like the crust. She thinks it's too hard (but really, it isn't). It's crunchy if I don't wrap it in plastic wrap right away after baking. My husband likes crusts and crunch. I can't win. Thus, my unending quest for the perfect banana bread recipe...


I don't mind crusts, per se, but growing up, mom was sort of like a t.v. dinner, Shake'n Bake, Duncan Hines cake mix, WonderBread kind of mom. She was a career woman and busy, busy, busy. She had no intuitive way about the kitchen like her mother did. I think cooking skills skipped a generation. My maternal grandmother made fantastic meals and was a natural cook--not requiring recipes quite often.

So, as a kid, it was such a treat when we had Swanson t.v. dinners because I liked the divided trays the food came in. We never bothered trying any flavours other than the Salisbury Steak dinner meals. It was a particular treat because first, it was different than what mom usually made, and second, there was always dessert. Our household always had snacks, but we rarely ever had dessert after dinner.

Mom loves everything highly refined and white: including rice, bread and baked goods. All baked goods had to be very moist and crunch wasn't a particularly kind adjective she'd use to describe something edible other than potato chips. I remember early on, sometime in my toddler years, my mother would lovingly make me good eats from white bread. The brand she purchased at that time was Sunbeam bread...the brand that came in a white plastic bag with a picture of a little girl with a blue bow on her head, biting into a slice of buttered bread. Little Miss Sunbeam was iconic and her image graced our formica kitchen table all through my formative years.

My mother never fiddled with cookie cutters or knives to create cute cut-outs from the sliced bread. She'd simply toast it, slather it with tons of salted butter, and then marmalade, and lovingly bite out a pattern with her teeth. I always liked her star patterns. Low-tech yet effective, indeed.

After school sometimes, I received a favourite treat: a slice of squishily soft white Sunbeam bread, sans crust, slathered with butter and sprinkled with white sugar. No cinnamon. Not toasted. Just soft, buttery sweetness. It tasted like cake. We rarely had cake in our home. Only on birthdays. I haven't had a sugar sandwich in 35 years. That's okay though, because now I can bake my own cakes.

My childhood favourites were Ding Dongs and Wagon Wheels. I haven't touched them in 30 years; not because they're not around still, but because I think they changed the recipe or something! Ding Dongs are now called King Dons. What's with that? and the cakes are drier and less tasty. Wagon Wheels seem tinier...more like Go-Cart Wheels.

But I digress. I was talking of the Crusties, wasn't I?

look at all that golden brown goodness! this crust is delicious--crunchy or soft!


Nowadays in Asian bakeries, you can buy white pullman-style loaves presliced and crustless. Yes, they actually cut off all the crusts for you in the bakery before bagging it. I couldn't believe it. I didn't pick up a loaf at all because I'm not crust-phobic; but apparently there must be a population of people out there who are (and who are too lazy to cut off the crusts themselves).

I've made Dorie Greenspan's Banana Bundt cake recipe about 5 times already. Each time I used a bundt pan and my mother would complain there was too much crust and that it was too dry.

This time, I adapted the recipe for loaf pans. The recipe makes 2 loaves neatly and the baking time doesn't really change at all. However, the crust ratio is more suitable for her palate. The bundt did have more crust after all, it seemed. I changed the recipe a bit by replacing one cup of the white sugar with one cup of brown sugar. It added a nice depth and caramel-like flavour to the cake. I definitely prefer the brown sugar to white.

Almost immediately after cooling, I wrapped one of the loaves tightly in plastic wrap to "age" overnight. The crust becomes very soft this way and is totally edible for the crust-phobic types. We immediately cut into the other loaf, whose crust was still caramelizingly crispy from the oven and Bebe cut off all the crunchy crusts with her fork, setting it aside on her plate. I asked her why she was doing it and she replied that it was the "best part" and she was saving it to eat last!

That little habit must be genetic, I think. I tend to do the same. I save the best for last too. I always enjoy a meal if my last bite consists of the best parts of the meal. My mother did this too. There's only one problem with this quirk: if you live in a family where individuals like to eat the best parts first. They hover over your juicy pile of KFC chicken skin, your maraschino cherry, your caramelized crusts...and poke their forks into what they think you're going to discard! My father often looked at my mother's pile of fried chicken skin and would comment, "Oh, you're not going to eat that?" and snatch up the little crispy bits into his mouth before she could stop him.

"Hey, I was saving that!" was an oft lamented whine in our household.

My daughters love this adapted banana cake recipe and I haven't heard a peep from my mom about the crusties. One loaf is aged to create the soft-crust and the other is crunchier, coming straight out of the oven. Eventually, by the next day both loaves have soft crusts anyway.

From now on, this'll be my go-to banana cake recipe. It's the best out of the ones I'ved tested thus far. Though my previous go-to recipe was easier to make, employed more bananas and didn't require sour cream, this recipe has better flavour and the crumb is lovely. And my family does prefer loaves to the bundt (though of course a bundt pan will look prettier). BTW, head on over to the sidebar and vote on the crusties...

BANANA "BUNDT-LOAVES"

adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Classic Banana Bundt Cake, from Baking: From My Home to Yours

[I used 2 loaf pans instead of the one Bundt pan called for in the original recipe]

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter at room temperature

2 cups sugar [I adapted by using one cup white sugar and one cup brown sugar]

2 tsps pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs, preferably at room temperature

About 4 very ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups)

1 cup sour cream or plain yogurt

• Preheat the oven to 350 F. Generously butter a 9- to 10-inch (12-cup) Bundt pan. [I used 2 loaf pans, and lined the bottoms with parchment]
• Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.
• Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter until creamy. Add the sugar and beat at medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla, then add the eggs, one at a time, beating for about 1 minute after each egg goes in. Reduce the mixer speed to low and mix in the bananas. Finally, mix in half the dry ingredients (the mixture will look curdled — just keep mixing), all the sour cream, and then the rest of the flour mixture. Scrape the batter into the pan, rap the pan on the counter to de-bubble the batter, and smooth the top.
• Bake for 65 to 75 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted deep into the center of the cake comes out clean. Check the cake after about 30 minutes, if it is browning too quickly, cover it loosely with a foil tent. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before unmolding on the rack to cool to room temp.
• If you have the time, wrap the cooled cake in plastic and allow it to sit on the counter overnight before serving — it’s better the second day.

More about → WHO LOVES THE CRUSTIES? GREENSPAN'S BANANA BUNDT CAKE

The Glycemic Index: A Critical Evaluation

The glycemic index (GI) is a measure of how much an individual food elevates blood sugar when it's eaten. To measure it, investigators feed a person a food that contains a fixed amount of carbohydrate, and measure their blood glucose response over time. Then they determine the area under the glucose curve and compare it to a standard food such as white bread or pure glucose.

Each food must contain the same total amount of carbohydrate, so you might have to eat a big plate of carrots to compare with a slice of bread. You end up with a number that reflects the food's ability to elevate glucose when eaten in isolation. It depends in large part on how quickly the carbohydrate is digested/absorbed, with higher numbers usually resulting from faster absorption.

The GI is a standby of modern nutritional advice. It's easy to believe in because processed foods tend to have a higher glycemic index than minimally processed foods, high blood sugar is bad, and chronically high insulin is bad. Yet many people have criticized the concept.  Why?

Blood sugar responses to a carbohydrate-containing foods vary greatly from person to person. For example, I can eat a medium potato and a big slice of white bread (roughly 60 g carbohydrate) with nothing else and only see a modest spike in my blood sugar. I barely break 100 mg/dL and I'm back at fasting glucose levels within an hour and a half. You can see a graph of this experiment here. That's what happens when you have a well-functioning pancreas and insulin-sensitive tissues. Your body shunts glucose into the tissues almost as rapidly as it enters the bloodstream. Someone with impaired glucose tolerance might have gone up to 170 mg/dL for two and a half hours on the same meal.

The other factor is that foods aren't eaten in isolation. Fat, protein, acidity and other factors slow carbohydrate absorption in the context of a normal meal, to the point where the GI of the individual foods become much less pronounced.

Researchers have conducted a number of controlled trials comparing low-GI diets to high-GI diets. I've done an informal literature review to see what the overall findings are. I'm only interested in long-term studies-- 10 weeks or longer-- and I've excluded studies using subjects with metabolic disorders such as diabetes.  

The question I'm asking with this review is, what are the health effects of a low-glycemic index diet on a healthy normal-weight or overweight person? I found a total of seven studies on PubMed in which investigators varied GI while keeping total carbohydrate about the same, for 10 weeks or longer. I'll present them out of chronological order because they flow better that way.  

One issue with this literature that I want to highlight before we proceed is that most of these studies weren't properly controlled to isolate the effects of GI independent of other factors.  Low GI foods are often whole foods with more fiber, more nutrients, and a higher satiety value per calorie than high GI foods.

Study #1. Investigators put overweight women on a 12-week diet of either high-GI or low-GI foods with an equal amount of total carbohydrate. Both were unrestricted in calories. Body composition and total food intake were the same on both diets. Despite the diet advice aimed at changing GI, the investigators found that both groups' glucose and insulin curves were the same!

Study #2. Investigators divided 129 overweight young adults into four different diet groups for 12 weeks. Diet #1: high GI, high carbohydrate (60%). Diet #2: low GI, high carbohydrate. Diet #3: high GI, high-protein (28%). Diet #4: low GI, high protein. The high-protein diets were also a bit higher in fat. Although the differences were small and mostly not statistically significant, participants on diet #3 improved the most overall in my opinion. They lost the most weight, and had the greatest decrease in fasting insulin and calculated insulin resistance. Diet #2 came out modestly ahead of diet #1 on fat loss and fasting insulin.

Study #3. At 18 months, this is by far the longest trial. Investigators assigned 203 healthy Brazilian women to either a low-GI or high-GI energy-restricted diet. The difference in GI between the two diets was substantial; the high-GI diet was supposed to be double the low-GI diet. This was accomplished by a number of differences between diets, including different types of rice and higher bean consumption in the low-GI group.  Weight loss was a meager 1/3 pound greater in the low-GI group, a difference that was not statistically significant at 18 months. Changes in estimated insulin sensitivity were not statistically significant.

Study #4. The FUNGENUT study. In this 12-week intervention, investigators divided 47 subjects with the metabolic syndrome into two diet groups. One was a high-glycemic, high-wheat group; the other was a low-glycemic, high-rye group. After 12 weeks, there was an improvement in the insulinogenic index (a marker of early insulin secretion in response to carbohydrate) in the rye group but not the wheat group. Glucose tolerance was essentially the same in both groups.

What makes this study unique is they went on to look at changes in gene expression in subcutaneous fat tissue before and after the diets. They found a decrease in the expression of stress and inflammation-related genes in the rye group, and an increase in stress and inflammation genes in the wheat group. They interpreted this as being the result of the different GIs of the two diets.

Further research will have to determine whether the result they observed is due to the glycemic differences of the two diets or something else.

Study #5. Investigators divided 18 subjects with elevated cardiovascular disease risk markers into two diets differing in their GI, for 12 weeks. The low-glycemic group lost 4 kg (statistically significant), while the high-glycemic group lost 1.5 kg (not statistically significant).  In addition, the low-GI group ended up with lower 24-hour blood glucose measurements.  This study was a bit strange because of the fact that the high-GI group started off 14 kg heavier than the low-GI group, and the way the data are reported is difficult to understand.  Perhaps these limitations, along with the study's incongruence with other controlled trails, are what inspired the authors to describe it as a pilot study.

Study #6. 45 overweight females were divided between high-GI and low-GI diets for 10 weeks. The low-GI group lost a small amount more fat than the high-GI group, but the difference wasn't significant. The low-GI group also had a 10% drop in LDL cholesterol.

Study #7. This was the second-longest trial, at 4 months. 34 subjects with impaired glucose tolerance were divided into three diet groups. Diet #1: high-carbohydrate (60%), high-GI. Diet #2: high-carbohydrate, low-GI. Diet #3: "low-carbohydrate" (49%), "high-fat" (monounsaturated from olive and canola oil). The diet #1 group lost the most weight, followed by diet #2, while diet #3 gained weight. The differences were small but statistically significant. The insulin and triglyceride response to a test meal improved in diet group #1 but not #2. The insulin response also improved in group #3. The high-GI group came out looking pretty good. 

[Update 10/2011-- please see this post for a recent example of a 6 month controlled trial including 720 participants that tested the effect of glycemic index modification on body fatness and health markers-- it is consistent with the conclusion below]

Overall, these studies do not support the idea that lowering the glycemic index of carbohydrate foods is useful for weight loss, insulin or glucose control, or anything else besides complicating your life.  I'll keep my finger on the pulse of this research as it expands, but for the time being I don't see the glycemic index per se as a significant way to combat fat gain or metabolic disease.

More about → The Glycemic Index: A Critical Evaluation

Direct Cinema? Innovative Documentary Studies Online

Image from Subdivided (Dean Terry, US 2007)

Film Studies For Free is keepin' it real today with a choice selection of links to mostly very recent, definitely innovative, and freely-accessible online documentary studies (last updated April 10, 2009):

• On the 'Rocumentary': Keith Beatty, 'It's Not Only Rock and Roll: 'Rockumentary', Direct Cinema, and Performative Display', Australasian Journal of American Studies. December 2005
• On Animation and Documentary: David Bordwell, 'Showing What Can't Be Filmed', Observations on Film Art and Film Art, March 24, 2009


• On Spectacle and Documentary: Elizabeth Cowie, 'The Spectacle of Reality and Documentary Film,' Documentary Box, #10 (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival) (1997) (Also see HERE; and do visit the main site Documentary Box Online Journal for many other great articles on documentary)


• On Music and Documentary: Leonardo D'Amico, 'People and sounds”: Filming African music between visual anthropology and television documentary', Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review, #11 (2007)
• On Direct Address and Documentary: Alex Gerbaz, 'Direct Address, Ethical Imagination, and Errol Morris’s Interrotron', Film-Philosophy, 12.2, September 2008


• On Activism and Documentary: John Haynes, 'Documentary as Social Justice Activism: The Textual and Political Strategies of Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films', 49th Parallel, Vol.21 (Autumn 2007)


• On 'the Personal' in Japanese Documentary: Nada Hisashi, 'Self-Documentary: Its Origins and Present State', Documentary Box, #26 (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival), 2005


• On Adaptation and Documentary: David T. Johnson, 'Playgrounds of Unlimited Potential: Adaptation, Documentary, and Dogtown and Z-Boys', Adaptation Vol. 2 , No. 1 , pp. 1 – 16 (2009) (a free sample article from this new Oxford Journals periodical)


• On Performativity and Science Documentary: John Arthur Little, 'The Power and Potential of Performative Documentary Film', e-thesis April 2007, Montana State University
• On New Approaches to Documentary: B. Ruby Rich, 'Documentary Disciplines: An Introduction'
  
• On New Media and Documentary: Bjørn Sørenssen, 'Digital video and Alexandre Astruc’s caméra-stylo: the new avant-garde in documentary realized?', Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 2, no. 1 (March 2008): 47-59 (see abstract; temporarily free online. Thanks a lot to Watching YouTube for the link)


• On Stylization, Abstraction and Documentary: Billy Budd Vermillion, 'The "Wondrous Truth" of Microcosmos', 16:9 - April 2007 - 5. årgang - nummer 21

Also see the great articles for the 'New worlds of documentary' Special Section of Jump Cut, issue no. 48, winter 2006, edited by Julia Lesage:

Introduction: new worlds of documentary by Julia Lesage; Emergency analysis, Terri Schiavo: introduction The cutting edge: emergencies in visual culture by Janet Staiger; Schiavo videos' context and reception: timely triage by Diane Waldman; Emergency analysis: the academic traffic in images by Catherine L. Preston; The videographic persistence of Terri Schiavo by Janet Walker Walker; A walk on the wild side: the changing face of TV wildlife documentary by Richard Kilborn; Strange Justice: sounding out the Right: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and constructing spin in the name of justice by Steve Lipkin; Giving voice: performance and authenticity in the documentary musical by Derek Paget and Jane Roscoe; Video Vigilantes and the work of shame by Gareth Palmer; Audio documentary: a polemical introduction for the visual studies crowd by Chuck Kleinhans; TV news titles: picturing the planet by Sean Cubitt; Les Archives de la Planète: a cinematographic atlas by Teresa Castro; Cinephilia and the travel film: Gambling, Gods and LSD by Catherine Russell; Dark Days: a narrative of environmental adaptation by Joseph Heumann and Robin L. Murray; Feminist history making and Video Remains by Alexandra Juhasz.

More about → Direct Cinema? Innovative Documentary Studies Online

Kimchi Chigae

Thanks to the numerous Korean dramas that we have been watching, I have been wanting to learn how to cook Korean dishes like dukboki (spicy rice cake) (this dish is featured in almost every single K-drama!), bibimbab and jajangmyun (black bean paste noodles). My elder son is especially keen to tuck into a bowl of jajangmyun. Just watching the characters in those K-dramas slurping away a bowl of thick, black, noodles would make him hungry!

As I can't even cook a proper Chinese dish, the only Korean dish I have tried to replicate at home was Kimchi Bokkumbap (kimchi fried rice). Since then, I only managed to venture a little 'further' by cooking a pack of Korean instant noodles with kimchi. I also attempted to make Korean pancakes with a pack of premix...but it ended up looking like seafood prata ;')


It was by chance that I came across this particular issue of a local magazine. There was this section on Korean food. I looked through the several recipes that were featured, and I was happy to discover that this Kimchi Chigae (or Jjigae) dish seems quite straight forward and easy for me to handle. I almost wanted to make this kimchi stew right away once I bought a pack of kimchi. (For local readers, I get freshly made kimchi from this Korean food stall/restaurant at Wisma Atria's Food Republic). Fortunately, I did a little search on this Korean dish and I realised that it will be better to cook it with older kimchi. So I waited for over a week (I couldn't wait any longer!), before I attempted on this dish.


I was very satisfied after I finished cooking this pot of kimchi stew. It looked so appetising and tasted good! I adapted the recipe slightly as the original one doesn't include gochujang or Korean hot pepper paste. Since I have a tube of pepper paste given to me by my friend, I added a tablespoon to the stew. Most kimchi chigae recipes will also require the addition of gochugaru or Korean hot pepper flakes. However, since I didn't have that on hand, I omitted it.


Although it was my maiden attempt, this stew turned out to be very delicious and full of flavours. It tasted much better than the one I had tried at a foodcourt stall which was way too sour for my liking. Even though my kids found the soup a little too spicy, they finished up all the ingredients in the stew. So, before I attempt on other Korean dishes, this is going to be a regular meal on our dinning table!



Ingredients:
(serves 3 to 4)

200g thinly sliced pork belly
400g kimchi, drained, cut into smaller pieces, reserve liquid
1 tablespoon oil
3 to 4 cups stock (beef or chicken, use canned)
1 tablespoon Korean chili paste (gochujang)
1 tablespoon Korean pepper powder/flakes (gochugaru)
300g tofu, cubed
a handful (or more) of enoki mushrooms, ends sliced off
two spring onions, cut into thin strips
some spring onions to use as garnish

Method:

1. Remove the skin on the pork belly ( I got the friendly butcher to do it for me!) and cut into thin slices.
2. Cut kimch into smaller pieces (if necessary), drain and reserve liquid.
3. Heat oil in a wok/a large skillet/frying pan, over medium heat.
4. When hot, stir fry pork for 1 min.
5. Add drained kimchi. Mix well for 2~3mins or till fragrant. (If your frying pan is not deep enough, you can transfer the mixture to a pot before proceeding with the following steps.)
6. Stir in kimchi liquid, stock (I used canned chicken stock and add water to make up to 3 ~ 4 cups as stated in the original recipe, some recipes only call for water), chili paste, chili powder. Add salt to taste (optional).
7. Bring to a vigorous boil. Add tofu, enoki mushrooms and spring onions.
8. Bring back to a boil and serve hot with rice. (Easy isn't it?!)

More about → Kimchi Chigae

MALAYSIAN STEAMED CAKE (MAH LAI GOH)

steamed cake (a.k.a. Mah Lai Goh), a dim-sum favourite

I have recently been enamoured by steamed cakes. I'm really falling in love with the fact that you can eat the quiveringly tender slices of cake without frosting. It so appeals to my sense of frugality and is a lot friendlier for my waistline.

The best thing of all about steaming your cakes instead of baking them is that you can re-steam leftover slices as you need them (about 3 minutes will do) and you have a wobbly-melt-in-your-mouth fresh cake again. I like to put a few slices on a heat-safe plate, place that on my steaming rack and by the time I have the milk in the glasses and on the table, my daughters have fresh cake again. I prefer steaming on the stove to the microwave; however I imagine you could simulate the same sort of thing in the microwave too for a few seconds. The thing about the microwave though is that after it cools down, you might have a dry slice of cake.

I'm assuming that this cake is called "Mah Lai Goh" because "Mah Lai" is Cantonese for Malaysian and "Goh" means cake. I have no idea if the cake originates in Malaysia but if you know, please do tell. All I know is that it is ubiquitous in Cantonese Dim Sum restaurants. Each restaurant has its own version. Chinese don't use fresh milk in any of their desserts. It's always evaporated milk. This recipe is pretty convenient because most of these items are readily found in the average pantry at any time. The ingredient list is short too.

This particular recipe has been fiddled by me to the point that it hardly resembles any of the recipes I've researched. Instead of using evaporated milk (which of course you can use), I use canned coconut milk. You have to use brown sugar because it gives it the rich caramelly flavour. The only problem I have encountered on occasion during my trials is that the flour may not get incorporated properly and you may have little pockets of unmixed flour. You must take care not to deflate the batter when mixing in the flour mixture. I sift the flour mixture over the batter and use a large balloon whisk and a gentle touch. You must work quickly yet be thorough in your folding.

I like to have my steamer all ready and heated up while I'm folding the batter and pouring it into the prepared pan. Though this cake is certainly yummy, I'm still partial to that Hot & Steamy Chocolate Cake I made before. My girls prefer it and I have to admit, chocolate rules my world (and of course theirs--it must be genetic). This Mah Lai Goh is a nice change of pace though...

CAKEBRAIN'S MAH LAI GOH (Malaysian Steamed Cake)

3 large eggs

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 oz coconut milk (or evaporated milk)

1 t. vanilla extract

1/4 cup melted unsalted butter

1/2 t. baking soda

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 t. baking powder

1. Spray an 8" round pan with Pam and line the bottom with a circle of parchment
2. Beat 3 eggs and brown sugar in a mixer on med-high speed for 5 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, prepare your steamer. [I used a wok with a steaming rack]. Preheat the steamer by bringing the water to a boil with the lid on.
4. Add the coconut milk, vanilla and melted butter to the egg mixture and beat for 1 minute.
5. Sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder in a bowl. Resift the flour mixture over the prepared batter. Using a balloon whisk, gently but quickly fold in all the flour so that the batter does not deflate; yet all the flour is combined.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Lightly cover the pan with foil [I slightly tent it] and place the pan on the steaming rack. Cover with the wok lid.
7. Steam for 30 minutes over high heat. CHECK THE WATER LEVEL PERIODICALLY to ensure that you don't boil away all the water. Add sufficient hot water to maintain water level just below the bottom of the pan. The pan should never be submerged, of course!
8. Remove pan and cool the cake; slice and serve.
9. Leftovers can be wrapped in an airtight container. Re-steam leftover slices for 3 minutes on high before serving.

More about → MALAYSIAN STEAMED CAKE (MAH LAI GOH)

Music to the Eyes: Film Music Essays and Resources Online

Film Studies For Free silently but sonorously brings you its list of links to high-quality and freely accessible online scholarly writings pertaining to music, sound, film, video, and television (last updated 19 May 2009).

• Tim Anderson, 'Review of Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema'
  

• Raphael Atlas, 'That Loving Feeling Meets the Danger Zone: Men, Sex, and Music in Top Gun'


• David Baker, 'I'm glad I'm not me!" Marking transitivity in Don't look back'


• Randall Barnes, 'Barton Fink: Atmospheric Sounds of the Creative Mind'


• Giorgio Biancorosso, 'Beginning Credits and Beyond: Music and the Cinematic Imagination'


• Ian Biddle, 'Love thy Neighbour? The Political Economy of Musical Neighbours?'


• Alexander Binns, 'Music in the films of Wong Kar-wai'


• Baldur Bjarnason, 'An Audiovisual Heterotopia'
  

• David Butler, 'The Days Do Not End: Film Music, Time and Bernard Herrmann'


• Lesley Chow, 'What the Sound Is Saying: How Music Moves in Bertolucci'


• Lesley Chow, 'Music, Morricone, and Jack Nicholson's Voice: The Soundscape of Wolf'


• Rebecca Coyle and Michael Hannan, 'Marking time in the Barry McKenzie films' music'


• Rebecca Coyle, 'Identifying Film Scoring [review of Anahid Kassabian, Hearing Film]'
  

• Leonardo D'Amico, '"People and sounds”: Filming African music between visual anthropology and television documentary'
  

• Lynda Dee Dixon and Patricia A. Washington, 'Rap Music Videos: The Voices of Organic Intellectuals'
  

• Aniruddha Dutta, 'Nation, Liberalisation And Film Songs: Technology And Hybridisation In Contemporary Hindi Film Music'


• E. Todd Fiegel, 'Bernard Herrmann as Musical Colorist: A Musico-Dramatic Analysis of His Score for The Day the Earth Stood Still'


• Steve Fore, 'From Rock kids to Beijing bastards: PRC youth subcultures on film before and after June 4'


• Liz Garnett, 'Musical Meaning Revisited: Thoughts on an 'Epic' Critical Musicology'
• Ian Garwood, 'Sound and Space in the Split-Screen Movie'


• Claudia Gorbman, 'Vigo/Jaubert' (scroll to p. 69)
  

• Catherine Grant, '''The "Author Function" in Transnational Film Adaptation: the Case of El lugar sin límites' (Arturo Ripstein, Manuel Puig, José Donoso)'


• Andrew Grossman, 'How to Murder John Williams: Toward an Ideology of Contrapuntal Antirealism'


• Andrew Grossman, 'Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in The Gambler'


• Andrew Grossman, 'False Consonance and False Consciousness: Contrarian Notes on the Ideology of Film Music'


• Amanda Howell, 'Spectacle, masculinity, and music in blaxploitation cinema'


• Randolph Jordan, 'Brakhage’s Silent Legacy for Sound Cinema'


• Randolph Jordan, 'Transcending the Fragmentation of Experience: The acousmêtre on the air in the films of Michael Snow'


• Randolph Jordan, 'The Work of Hildegard Westerkamp in the Films of Gus Van Sant'


• Brett Kashmere, 'Beyond Notes: On Music, Improvisation and Film, and Writing [Brakhage]'


• Brett Kashmere, 'Semi-Random Thoughts about Improvisation, Jazz, and/or (a) Film in No Real Particular Order (Then Again, Maybe So)'


• Anahid Kassabian, 'Songstruck: rethinking identifications in romantic comedies'


• Anahid Kassabian, 'Ubiquitous Listening and Networked Subjectivity'


• Andrew L. Kaye, 'The Film Score and the African Musical Experience: Some comments on a work in progress'


• Victoria Large, Clouds and Scattered Sun: Kelly and Donen's It's Always Fair Weather'


• Jerrold Levinson, 'Film Music and Narrative Agency', in David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds.) , Post-Theory (via Google Books)


• William Lawrence McGinney, 'The Whole as a Result of its Parts: Assembly in Aaron Copland's Score for The Red Pony' (e-thesis)


• Brian McMillan, 'Complicitous Critique: Dancer in the Dark as Postmodern Musical'


• Patricia Mellencamp, 'Spectacle and Spectator: Looking Through the American Musical Comedy'


• Miguel Mera, 'Reap What You Sow: "Perfect Day" [Lou Reed, 1973] / Trainspotting' in Matthew Caley and Steve Lannin (eds), Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema (via Google Books)


• Cory Messenger, 'Act naturally: Elvis Presley, the Beatles and "rocksploitation"'


• Tony Mitchell, 'Minimalist menace: The Necks score The boys'


• Mladen Milicevic, 'Film Sound Beyond Reality: Subjective Sound in Narrative Cinema'
  

• Niall Moody, 'Motion as the Connection Between Audio and Visuals'


• Scott Murphy, 'The Major Tritone Progression in Recent Hollywood Science Fiction Films'


• Ellen J. Nasto, 'Bernard Herrmann: An Annotated Index of Materials'


• Andrew Patrick Nelson, 'Notes and Thoughts on the use of popular songs in John Hughes Sixteen Candles (1984)' Part One


• Andrew Patrick Nelson, 'Notes and Thoughts on the use of popular songs in John Hughes Sixteen Candles (1984)' Part Two


• David P. Neumeyer, 'Schoenberg at the Movies: Dodecaphony and Film'


• Louis Niebur, 'Review of Kay Dickinson (ed.), Movie Music: The Film Reader'


• Offscreen Journal's 'Favourite Moments of Film Sound': Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind By: Jim Batcho; Patriot Games By: Aden Evens; The Jazz Singer By: Claudia Gorbman ; La Maman et la putain By: André Habib; The Haunting By: Thomas Phillips; Love is the Devil By: Martin Shingler; Stalker By: Donato Totaro; Tati, Hitchcock, Antonioni By: Elisabeth Weis; The Exorcist By: William Whittington ; The Wilhelm Scream By: Benjamin Wright.


• Offscreen Journal's 'Discourses on Diegesis': The Success Story of a Misnomer By: Henry M. Taylor; Diegetic Commentaries By: Martin F. Norden; Constructing the Diegesis in a Multi-Channel World By: Mark Kerins; Does Anybody Hear? By: Randolph Jordan; Acoustics of the Soul By: Randy Thom.


• Offscreen Journal's 'The State of the Art [on integration between sound and image]': Visual Music as Performing Art By: Fred Collopy; Synchronous Form In Visual Music By: Michael Betancourt ; On Sound and Image as a Single Entity By: Barry Spinello


• Ted Pigeon, 'On the Cinema of Music'
  

• Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk, 'Apprehending Beauty [Review of Michel Chion, The Thin Red Line]
  

• Robert Robertson, 'Eisenstein on his audiovisual collaboration with Prokofiev'
  

• Karyn Charles Rybacki and Donald Jay Rybacki, 'Cultural Approaches to the Rhetorical Analysis of Selected Music Videos'
  


• Hannu Salmi, 'Composing the past: music and the sense of history in Hollywood spectacles of the 1950s and early 1960s'
  

• Diane Sandars, 'From the warehouse to the multiplex: techno and rave culture's reconfiguration of the late 1990s sci-fi spectacle as musical performance'
  

• Diana Sandars, 'Review of The Pop The Song in Cinema, edited by Matthew Caley and Steve Lannin'


• Tom Schneller, 'Death and Love: Bernard Herrmann's Score for Vertigo'
  

• Julia Schpinitskaya, 'Solaris by A. Tarkovsky: Musical-Visual Troping, Paradigmatism, Cognitive Stereoscopy'


• Linda Schubert, 'The Film Scores of Henry Vars in the United States: An Overview'
  

• Dennis C. Schweitzer, 'Ton and Traum: A Critical Analysis of the Use of Sound Effects and Music in Contemporaary Narrative Film' e-thesis
  

• 'Silent Jane', 'Beautiful Fragments of a Traumatic Memory: Synaesthesia, Sesame Street, and Hearing the Colors of an Abusive Past'
  

• Greg M. Smith, 'Streisand Shops the Museum Store: Consuming Art on Television'


• Jeff Smith 'The edge of seventeen: class, age, and popular music in Richard Linklater's School of Rock'


• Murray Smith, 'Music, Film, and Emotion'


• Robynn J. Stilwell, 'It May Look Like a Living Room…: The Musical Number and
  the Sitcom'


• Robynn J. Stilwell, 'Music in Films: A Critical Review of Literature, 1980-1996'


• Randy Thom, 'Designing a Movie for Sound [Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998-2001]'


• Gordon Thomas, 'Will the Shark Bite? G. W. Pabst and The Threepenny Opera'


• Boris Trbic, 'Norbert [Schultze], We Hardly Knew Ye: Rethinking the Late German Composer'
  

• Ben Turner, 'Acoustic Ambience in Cinematography: An Exploration of the Descriptive and Emotive Impact of the Aural Environment'


• Alan Vanneman, 'When Fred Met Red: Fred Astaire, Red Skelton, and Vera-Ellen Commingle in Three Little Words'


• Steve Vertlieb, 'Herrmann and Hitchcock: The Torn Curtain'


• Justin Vicari, 'Space Here We Come: P. J. Harvey's Please Leave Quietly Redefines the Concert Film DVD'


• James Wierzbicki, 'Review of Anahid Kassabian: Hearing Film'


• Ken Woodgate, '"Young and in love": music and memory in Leander Haussmann's Sun Alley'


• Bill Wrobel, 'The Nature of Bernard Herrmann's Music'


• Bill Wrobel, 'Herrmann Music in Have Gun Will Travel and Other Classic CBS Television Series'

Further essential resources may be found at FilmSound.Org, SonicObjects and USC Thornton Film Composers Know the Score (YouTube video).

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