It’s a rare thing when I come across a cookbook I not only want to read, but actually want to plunk down cold hard cash to buy in hardcover–happens maybe at the most once a year. That’s not to say I don’t buy cookbooks for others, especially when it’s something I know they’ll really enjoy, like Bravetart by Stella Parks for my friend Karen or Ina Garten’s Modern Comfort Food for my cousin’s daughter Caroline. I can find a virtual world of recipes online so a cookbook has to offer more than instructions and eye-catching food photography. What I hunger for is a compelling story about the creative process. I’m fascinated by the author’s journey through the “how’s” and the “why’s,” which I think is at the heart of my own food blogging. If I wanted to merely post recipes I could do so quite easily 5 days a week if I choose, but I like to put recipes in context, to tell a story. Consequently, for better or worse, I don’t post unless I have something to write about…and lately…well, let’s just say it’s been even more of a daily struggle to find inspiration and motivation–although you probably couldn’t tell by just scrolling through my Instagram feed.

I’m sure we’re all aware, Instagram only offers a curated, filtered glimpse into a person’s life. In my case, it’s a collage of artfully shot (at least i hope they are) iPhone pics of various kitchen experiments or, more often than not, a kind of visual diary of “what I eat in a day.” There is a messier truth behind the photographs, littered with failed attempts, a compost pail full of discarded barely edible atrocities, and ziplock bags full of not-so-pretty odd bits I can’t bear to throw away. What can I say, I have an advanced degree in repurposing…or as I like to call creative problem-solving. The thing is, whether I’m starting from scratch or devising a hack to transform odd bits into something deserving of their own spotlight, all my kitchen endeavors (including the bake sales) over the last 14 months have been a form of escapism–a way to deal with depression and anxiety through a familiar creative outlet. The world around me might going to shit–by that I mean the cumulative effect of the pandemic and 4 wretched years of that “former guy”–but so long as I can create something worthy of a drool emoji I’ll be okay…or at least have a reason to get out of bed in the morning besides walking Violet. There is absolutely nothing wrong of escapism–which brings me back to my latest cookbook discovery, The Art of Escapism Cooking by Mandy Lee, a frequent online contributor to Food 52 and award-winning food blogger of Lady and Pups. The book title alone was enough to peak my interest.

I’d watched several of Mandy’s cooking videos before on the Food 52 site, as well as YouTube, so I was familiar the style and content of her work. She’s one of those people who meticulously labors over the details, explaining why certain steps are absolutely necessary to achieve “perfect” results, which some people might find a bit annoying (i.e. Karen). For example, in a recent video Mandy painstakingly dissects the structural properties of her ideal teatime scone–not the pretender biscuit masquerading as a scone, but the real McCoy with its trademark even horizontal split that gives one optimum surface for spreading on clotted cream and jam.

In another video, she spends 10+ minutes demonstrating how to flatten out a whole “curved” chicken, surgically snipping apart joints and cartilage with a pair of kitchen shears, which I actually found memorizing. If I’ve got a whole raw chicken lying around I might be tempted to give her technique a go just for the hell of it.

Since I hadn’t followed her self-described “angry food blog” I wasn’t aware of her backstory, so I didn’t really know much about why she wrote the cookbook nor her reason for its title. I did, however, come across a Q&A video on YouTube in which she talked about her approach to food and how spending what sounded like 6 miserable years practically self-isolated in her Beijing apartment drove her to start her blog that ultimately led to her writing the cookbook, which is as much a memoir as it is Mandy’s culinary doctrine. For her, taking deep dives into research and recipe development was her escape from the realities of life in authoritarian China as an unwilling expat. It was also her way to regain control over some part of her life. After over a year trapped inside our pandemic bubble, boy can I relate!

To call Mandy opinionated is like saying Martha Stewart has mild control issues. Mandy likes what she likes. She is unapologetic about creating recipes to satishy her own palate–though she does apparently give her husband’s opinion some weight. I respect her convictions. Mandy may not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially if you’re the type of cook who chafes at the very suggestion of following rules, ironclad or otherwise. Ironically, despite being a trained professional pastry chef, I’m more inclined to break the rules Just ask my mom. Nevertheless, I can appreciate Mandy’s insatiable curiosity, which fuels her obsessive quest for answers and determination to find solutions. Her recipes are born out of her desire to solve a problem…or rather what she perceives to be a “problem” that needs fixing. Mandy sweats the minutia in pursuit of her idea of perfection so you don’t have to.

As a memoir, I found Mandy’s narrative riveting. She’s at once passionate, witty, dry, and sardonic, even self-effacing at times. I truly enjoyed reading about her process, which in so many ways is different from my own. What’s fascinating to me is how her approach to food is informed by her life experiences, in polar opposite to my own. Mandy is completely self-taught and has no cooking experience in the culinary profession. She essentially cooks for herself, her husband, and their pups. Mandy freely admits (in the Q&A) that the whole idea of entertaining and cooking for even a small group gives her anxiety attacks. While she’s become more comfortable doing cooking demos on camera, it’s not exactly her ideal form of communication. I got the sense from reading her book that she really thrives in a control environment of her own design, which is no surprise why she’s so insistent about completing steps in a specific order under specific conditions. For her, the art of “escapism” is really the art of total control–or in her case the complete freedom to engage with food however she pleases to achieve her pinnacle of perfection.

In fact, to me, cooking isn’t even about love. As much as I would like to say that I cook to make other people happy, I don’t. Truth is, I cook largely to make myself happy, as medication, as therapy.

Mandy Lee, The Art of Escapism Cooking

For me, escapism, as it relates to cooking, means something else. It’s about taking a leap of faith, opening myself up to new ideas, creating something unexpected, and embracing imperfection–the kind of home cooking that Nigella Lawson would say happens “organically,” without the performative, showy presentation that characterizes much of fine dining. I’m not striving for some platonic ideal nor am I trying to impress anyone (as I would if I was cooking or baking for the public). The goal is to simply make delicious food to be enjoyed, preferably to be shared…and to make others happy. If I happen to come upon a new technique in the process, all the better.

Mandy’s recipe for her miraculous Mochi Bread Dough is one of those gems that opened my eyes to new possibilities. As with all her recipes, Mandy no doubt devoted countless hours researching techniques. manipulating ingredients, and fine-tuning processes to arrive at the “perfect” iteration–each step of the process beautifully photographed to further illustrate her precise directions. Must be the former architecture student in her talking.

For the most part her recipe is fairly straightforward. Mandy’s idea to replace the traditional cooked flour roux (aka tang zhong ) with one made from sticky rice flour or mochi is pure genius. According to Mandy, the mochi base provides far superior hydration than a flour roux, producing a final product that is impossibly light, airy, and soft, with just the right amount of chew–what she glowingly describes as “squishy.” I’ll go on record now as siding with Mandy’s “Team Squish.” Sure, I love me a crusty loaf of sourdough, but like her I’ll always have a soft spot (pun intended) for the pillowy delicate texture of Asian milk bread. It conjures up nothing but warm fuzzy childhood memories.

On the first go around, I made a single batch of the dough, opting to use my go-to food processor fitted with a dough blade instead of a stand mixer–much faster and more efficient.

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Torn between fluffy donuts and a braided loaf, I split the batch in half and made both, forming the latter more like a babka twist than Mandy’s intricately plaited challah. The donuts were nothing short of heavenly! Seriously the most ethereal fried dough you can possibly imagine. I deviated from Mandy’s recipe and glazed my donuts with a combination of melted butter, Lyle’s golden syrup, and sea salt. Cue the angel chorus….aahhhhhhhh!

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As for the cinnamon sugar “babka” loaf, it was so well-hydrated that even after 3 days the texture of the bread was still soft and tender.

Buoyed by my success, I decided to tackle Mandy’s Cruffns, employing her technique for “speed lamination” of the mochi bread dough. This is where I hit a speed bump. There was no way in hell I was going to roll the dough out into a 10″ x 30″ sheet on a 20″ wide surface in order to achieve the requite number of 5″ wide folds. The best I could do was cut the dough into 2 halves and roll each piece into a 6″ x 18″ sheet, which would still allow me to get in 6 (3″ wide) folds. I divided the room temperature butter and flour mixture in half and, following her instructions, spread an even layer across the surface of the sheeted dough, leaving a 1″ border on all sides, which was then brushed with beaten egg before folding and sealing the edges. I proceeded to roll the folded dough out to 3″ x 18″, brushed the entire surface with beaten egg and marked off 6 (3″ wide) sections, and repeated the folding. I wrapped the 2 laminated doughs and let them chill out in the fridge for a few hours before forming the cruffins. If you’re interested in Mandy’s speedy lamination technique, watch her cruffin demo on YouTube.

I went with the classic plain cruffin for the first batch. Again, I had to modify the dimensions to fit my work surface and muffin molds, which were shallower than the deep baba-like baking molds Mandy used, rolling the dough out to approximately 11″ x 9″, cutting the dough into 7 (about 1 1/4″ wide) strips, then tightly rolling each strip into a pinwheel and nestling each pinwheel cut side up into well-buttered and sugared muffin tin molds. Once the dough doubled in size, I popped the cruffins into a preheated 350F degree oven to bake for about 15 mins., until golden brown. I let the cruffins cool for a few minutes in the molds, before tossing each one in sugar. They were arguably the most delightful cruffins I’ve ever made…or eaten for that matter.

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For the second batch, I decided to get a little fancy, spreading a layer of homemade pistachio butter on some of the strips and Nutella on the rest.

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So, was it really necessary to follow Mandy’s recipe to a tee? No, because as much as she tried to make her recipes “foolproof,” in real life kitchens that’s just not very practical. Not everyone, including myself, has a 30″ long surface to work on. There has to be some wiggle room. To be honest, when I cook or bake at home, when I’m in “escape” mode, I often play it by ear, changing up spices and flavorings, adjusting seasonings. If I make a dish more than once, I can guarantee subsequent iterations will be different depending on what ingredients I have on hand. I imagine if I was ever to write a cookbook, it’d be more like recipes flanked with a bunch of sidebars full of notes about substitutions, variations, and adjustments–anything that would inspire the reader to make the recipe their own. And, of course, there’d be plenty of backstories to put each recipe in context.

Having made her Mochi Bread Dough twice, the only adjustments I made to Mandy’s original recipe was to increase the amount of salt from 1 t. to 1 1/4 t. after tasting the first batch, and mixing the dough in a food processor fitted with a dough blade instead of mixing it in a stand mixer. I used the regular glutenous rice flour I buy at my neighborhood Asian market in the recipe, though if you can’t find sticky rice flour at the grocery store you can probably try using Mochiko sweet rice flour, which is often more widely available. Barring that, buy the sticky rice flour online. I’m not even going to attempt to explain or reinterpret her Cruffin recipe here. Suffice it to say it will need some adjustment if you don’t have a wide work surface to roll out the dough to her exact dimensions to do the butter folds. What I did for mine worked okay for the limited counter space in my kitchen, though I’m sure I can fiddle with it some more.

Mochi Bread Dough (adapted from Mandy Lee’s The Art of Escapism Cooking)

• 1 c. sticky or glutenous rice flour
• 1 c. water
• 3 c. bread flour
• 1 large egg plus 1 T. egg white (reserve leftover)
• 3 T. sugar
• 1 1/2 t. instant yeast
• 1 1/4 t. sea salt
• 1 T. unsalted butter, room temp.

1. In a small sauce pan whisk together rice flour and water until smooth. Cook under medium high heat, stirring constantly with a spatula until the mixture resembles a gloopy blob. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature.
2. Place the bread flour, sugar, yeast, and salt into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a dough blade. Pulse to combine ingredients, then add the egg, whites, cooked mochi base, and butter. Pulse at 2 second intervals for anywhere between 90 seconds and 2 mins. until the mixture forms into a smooth, elastic dough which is tacky to the touch but not sticky. Add a teaspoon of bread flour at a time as needed.
3. Shape the dough into a smooth ball and place inside a well-greased bowl, flipping it around to fully coat it in grease. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise in a warm space until doubled in size, anywhere between 1-2 hours.
4. Deflate the dough before rolling and shaping. *If you’re forming the dough into a loaf, use the leftover egg white to brush onto the surface before baking.

Donuts

1. After the first rise, flatten the dough and roll it out on a lightly floured surface to about 3/8″ thickness, then punch out circles with 3 1/2″- 4″ plain round cutter, depending on how big you want your donuts. Punch out the centers with an appropriate sized round cutter (1″- 1 1/2″).
2. Place each dough ring on a 5″ parchment square then transfer them onto a sheet pan to rise until doubled, lightly draped with a sheet of greased plastic wrap.
3. Heat about 2″ of oil in a heavy bottom pot or deep skillet to 325F degrees. Lower 3-4 dough rings at a time depending on the size of the pot. Gently press down on the dough to submerge it in the oil for a couple seconds to release the parchment. Remove the parchment squares.
4. Fry each side for about 2 mins. or until nicely golden. Lift the donuts out of the oil and set them on a wire rack over a sheet pan to drain.
5. Toss the warm donuts in sugar or drizzle with glaze.

Buttery Golden Syrup Glaze:

Heat 1 T. unsalted butter together with 1/4 c. Lyle’s golden syrup and 1/4 t. sea salt. Stir to combine.