.: evil jungle prince :.

This amazing book I just received from Amazon has again managed me to get excited about my other great love, Greek cooking, so I thought I'd act in my impulses and try baking a Greek Easter bread called Tsoureki since I happened to have all the ingredients on hand.

I've linked to the recipe above -- I won't reprint it here as I'm still experimenting with it, altering it to suit my tastes by omitting egg yolks and milk. (I used egg whites and soy milk instead.) I'd say I still have a ways to go in tweaking the recipe to my personal preferences, but the first try turned out pretty well. The combination of anise, orange peel, and almond is really an amazing one.

One problem that I have is the 'conversion challenge' presented by my convection oven. Normally recipes can be easily altered to suit convection ovens by lowering the temperature by 20 degrees or so, but in the case of baking it is always the case that my bread crust browns far too soon. Subsequently, in order for the bread to become thoroughly baked, the crust becomes far too hard and brown. I need to figure out a solution to this.

Lunch today was again bibim naengmyun, in an attempt to use up as much as my kkaennip as possible while it's fresh and available. The peppers here are from my garden, too: the gochu fresh from the vine, the sliced jalapenos frozen over the winter in my freezer.