![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
multipurposegoddessMade Black Sesame Cupcakes (Kurogoma Mushipan) last night. Pretty darn good. I'm not completely sure about the black sesame as the main flavoring, it's certainly not bad but it's kind of subtle (which might be good) and a new cupcake flavor for me. Of course, I ate them all up pretty much as soon as they were done, so I guess I liked it. The recipe made 11 smaller than standard cupcakes, says it makes 8 cupcakes of unknown size, but I was very conservative in filling the liners, I could have gotten more batter in each one with no repercussions, I'm pretty sure.
Pro tip, ground black sesame seeds (ground in my coffee grinder, that is) look a lot like dryer lint after washing a load of black towels. And the batter looks like spinach dip for much of the process. But the resulting cupcakes are light and airy and not terribly sweet.
This was also the debut of my new 6" bamboo steamer. I've been using a 10" steamer, I think, and it only fits into the giant wok or the giant stockpot, both of which are a hassle to wrangle. The new tiny steamer fits in a saucepan! Vrey sonvenient, especially since I am usually steaming for one.
This is the ONLY May recipe I have made this year. Hopefully June will be a little more dumplingtastic.
One of the things we did while my sister was here was watch Seven Samurai. It's as good as everyone says it is, if you were wondering. It's been Up Next in my Akira Kurosawa Chronological Film Watch for a while now, I found it hard to commit to the 3.5 hours it would take to watch it whenever I felt like watching movies, but having someone willing to watch it with me helped. Even so, we split it over two nights (I recorded it off of AMC and it has a 5 minute intermission about halfway through, so we paused it there). Long movie. But it was a lot of story to it - all seven of the samurai are distinct and interesting characters, and a surprising number of the villagers, too, and the relationships are complex. The fight scenes are kind of weird to watch now, as they are so very not graphic, but they get the idea across, and the laying out of strategy is a lot clearer than is often the case. I halfway wanted to watch it again as soon as it finished, except that would have been another 3.5 hours so I didn't.
But we did watch The Magnificent Seven a few nights later. I had recorded that when a local PBS station showed it, but my recording was flawed so i rented it off of iTunes. I'd never rented from iTunes before and that was super easy and had no technical glitches. I like that the file just disappeared after 24 hours - I am bad about clearing out old videos that I'm not going to watch again, especially if I paid oney for them, for some reason. And in setting up the rental we watched the trailer which is hilarious! I still go around singing "They were only seven but they fought like seven hundred . . . SEVEN!"
Anyway, the movie - not as complex as Seven Samurai, but still pretty good and surprisingly socially relevant. Fun spotting all the big names - probably the best I've liked Charles Bronson. Hilarious that they call Yul Brynner a cajun (to explain the accent, I guess? Bizarre). The guy who was "introduced" in the credits - Horst something? I never heard of him - also had a pronounced accent that has no explanation. It's kind of endearing that they were willing to cast these guys who didn't sound like typical movie cowboys. The defensive strategy is not as interesting, but the story is pretty faithful to the original and the changes to the characters make sense. I don't think I'll be seeking out the sequels (I can't believe they made three sequels! That's crazy)
Forgot to mention my two favorite quotes from Magnificent Seven. "If God hadn't wanted them to be sheared, he wouldn't have made them sheep" which I have loved since I heard it in some amalgamation of clips but for some reason thought was from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and "Don't understand me so fast", Yul Brynner remonstrating with his old friend who assumes there's some sort of wealth hidden in the village. I could embroider that on a sampler, "Don't understand me so fast".
So now I Live in Fear is next to be watched. I haven't heard a lot about that one, I'm interested to see what tone it takes. I suspect it will be more uplifting than it sounds like it should be from the title, just based on the Kurosawa movies I have watched so far.
Pro tip, ground black sesame seeds (ground in my coffee grinder, that is) look a lot like dryer lint after washing a load of black towels. And the batter looks like spinach dip for much of the process. But the resulting cupcakes are light and airy and not terribly sweet.
This was also the debut of my new 6" bamboo steamer. I've been using a 10" steamer, I think, and it only fits into the giant wok or the giant stockpot, both of which are a hassle to wrangle. The new tiny steamer fits in a saucepan! Vrey sonvenient, especially since I am usually steaming for one.
This is the ONLY May recipe I have made this year. Hopefully June will be a little more dumplingtastic.
One of the things we did while my sister was here was watch Seven Samurai. It's as good as everyone says it is, if you were wondering. It's been Up Next in my Akira Kurosawa Chronological Film Watch for a while now, I found it hard to commit to the 3.5 hours it would take to watch it whenever I felt like watching movies, but having someone willing to watch it with me helped. Even so, we split it over two nights (I recorded it off of AMC and it has a 5 minute intermission about halfway through, so we paused it there). Long movie. But it was a lot of story to it - all seven of the samurai are distinct and interesting characters, and a surprising number of the villagers, too, and the relationships are complex. The fight scenes are kind of weird to watch now, as they are so very not graphic, but they get the idea across, and the laying out of strategy is a lot clearer than is often the case. I halfway wanted to watch it again as soon as it finished, except that would have been another 3.5 hours so I didn't.
But we did watch The Magnificent Seven a few nights later. I had recorded that when a local PBS station showed it, but my recording was flawed so i rented it off of iTunes. I'd never rented from iTunes before and that was super easy and had no technical glitches. I like that the file just disappeared after 24 hours - I am bad about clearing out old videos that I'm not going to watch again, especially if I paid oney for them, for some reason. And in setting up the rental we watched the trailer which is hilarious! I still go around singing "They were only seven but they fought like seven hundred . . . SEVEN!"
Anyway, the movie - not as complex as Seven Samurai, but still pretty good and surprisingly socially relevant. Fun spotting all the big names - probably the best I've liked Charles Bronson. Hilarious that they call Yul Brynner a cajun (to explain the accent, I guess? Bizarre). The guy who was "introduced" in the credits - Horst something? I never heard of him - also had a pronounced accent that has no explanation. It's kind of endearing that they were willing to cast these guys who didn't sound like typical movie cowboys. The defensive strategy is not as interesting, but the story is pretty faithful to the original and the changes to the characters make sense. I don't think I'll be seeking out the sequels (I can't believe they made three sequels! That's crazy)
Forgot to mention my two favorite quotes from Magnificent Seven. "If God hadn't wanted them to be sheared, he wouldn't have made them sheep" which I have loved since I heard it in some amalgamation of clips but for some reason thought was from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and "Don't understand me so fast", Yul Brynner remonstrating with his old friend who assumes there's some sort of wealth hidden in the village. I could embroider that on a sampler, "Don't understand me so fast".
So now I Live in Fear is next to be watched. I haven't heard a lot about that one, I'm interested to see what tone it takes. I suspect it will be more uplifting than it sounds like it should be from the title, just based on the Kurosawa movies I have watched so far.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-04 05:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-04 06:14 pm (UTC)