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my 2nd attempt at making turkish delight was only half successful, due to excessive sweating. next time (next week), i'll make sure to heat the syrup to the 240°F soft ball stage before mixing it with the starch paste.

this morning i removed the turkish delight slab from the pyrex dish. i was afraid it'd stick but using a butter knife i was able to trace the edges and easily peel out the slab onto a large cutting board doused with confectionary sugar and corn starch.

with an oiled knife, i began cutting the slab into strips and then coating them with the sugar/starch mixture. i made a quick supply run to market basket to get some wax paper for storing the turkish delights. i took about 15-20 minutes but when i came back, i noticed the turkish delight had been sweating and soaking up the sugar/starch.

sweating is the bane of turkish delight making, and i found all sorts of advice online on how to deal with it. i settled on cutting the strips into final squares and then coating them with only corn starch to form a protective dry sealant. one thing i didn't like are the curved pieces that formed on the edge of the pyrex dish (i believe turkish delights should be perfectly square/rectangular); i may try to find a less curved dish for next time.

hours later i went to check on the turkish delight and noticed it was still sweating. maybe not as bad as before, but enough to soak the powdery corn starch. i coated each square in more corn starch but i think at this stage there's no salvaging this latest batch.

but how do they taste? super sweet (i did use 4 cups of sugar after all, not to mention the confectionary sugar) with a strong rose taste. it doesn't have a chewy consistency though (like a gummy), but rather it's more like jello (easily broken up using my tongue). also when i bite into a piece it glistens on the inside much means there's still a lot of trapped moisture. some recipes call for a 2 day curing before dividing up into smaller pieces. i may try that next time. i think more importantly is heating the syrup to soft ball stage.

i did have a single piece of turkish delight that included some of the harder gelatin from the bottom of the pot. that one did have some chew, so that's the consistency i want to achieve.

i'm always trying to jazz up my morning/lunch oatmeal. i went a long time where i had sweet oatmeal: raisins, cinammon, brown sugar. now i'm all about the salty oatmeal. i love having it with chicken apple sausage.1 i keep on adding more ingredients, trying to create the savoriest oatmeal: chicken apple sausage, chopped scallions, dash of salt, white ground pepper, fried onions, japanese furikake, and a dash of balsamic vinegar. even after all those ingredients i'm still not happy with the result.2

in the late afternoon i went to the local liquor store and bought myself a mega millions lottery ticket. it's hard to ignore the $640 million jackpot, with every news outlet talking about it non-stop. i can't remember the last time i bought a lottery ticket but i do recall i didn't get a single matching number.

my roommate came home around 6:30 with hands darkened by chain grease. "my bicycle pedal fell off, do you have any tools i can fix it with?" he asked. i gave him my socket wrench set. i went outside a few minutes later to see what was wrong. it wasn't the pedal but the leftside crank arm that fell off. he finally managed to screw it back on and then went out immediately afterwards. i had a feeling he probably went to get some groceries so i wasn't surprised when he came back a short time later. he told me the crank arm began to wobble again and it might fall off soon. if it ends up he has to take the bike into a shop to get it fixed or buy a bunch of replacement parts for a diy solution, i'm of the opinion he should junk this bike and get a better bike. this giant MTB is too small for him, it pains me to see him pedalling on it like a clown bike.

came 11:00 i waited for the announcement of the mega millions drawing (the largest single jacket on world lottery history by the way). guess what? not a single number matched! (my number: 09 20 30 40 44 (14)). better luck next time.


1 where do the casings for chicken sausages come from? i take it they're not natural because i don't think chickens have very big intestines.

2 the savoriest breakfast porridge i've ever had? outside the khao yai national park in thailand.


Inner Circle - "Sweat (A La La La La Long)"