"Marblelous" Gift

After more than a year of staying in our home, Louis and I still love it very much. Coming home after a few hours away or after work is always pleasurable and restful. Its definitely more than a house. Its our home. Filled with creature comforts, knick-knacks and memories that we like and love. And I think Faith feels the same way too. Whenever we are out after a day and when we bring her home, we'll put her in her cot and turn on the mobile at her bed. And she would have a delighted smile, at times, kicking her hands and feet in excitement and pure pleasure.

Louis and I took nearly half a year of intense house hunting before we finally found this unit that we loved at first sight. Everything felt right about our house. Naturally, the kitchen takes pride of place in the entire house and its where I love to potter, cook and bake. The wall between our kitchen and living/dinning room is separately by glass halfway from the waist up to the ceiling. While I'm in the kitchen doing my baking or preparing Faith's food, I could always see what she's up to in the living room.

Really, there's nothing that I don't like in the house, although I sometimes daydream that if we have another house and/or a bigger renovation budget, I would like to have a marble kitchen counter top. We currently have a gray with white speckles solid surface that looks pleasing and serves its purpose. Except that when I want to roll out rich doughs (doughs enriched with more butter), its a little of a challenge given our humid and hot weather.

I used to bake and make a lot of apple galettes, a type of open, crispy and crusty apple tart, when I was in France. When I returned and tried making them in my kitchen, the toughest challenge is always rolling out the dough. Just out from the fridge, it would be too cold and hard to roll. After a few minutes of rolling, the dough goes from softer and pliable to become wet and sticky, that no amount of flouring would help. And I would end up having a holey dough at the end as I try to transfer the dough from the counter top to the tart tray.

A marble counter top would be useful as it is cool and would hopefully make it easier to roll the dough without it getting wet and sticky too quickly. I've read that in some professional kitchens when they do a lot of rich doughs (e.g. those for croissants), their steel counter tops would be fitted to have cold water running underneath it so that counter top remains cool. That makes it easier to handle the doughs. I'm not a Michelin-starred chef nor am I'm running a professional home-kitchen myself. Which is why I am perfectly happy with just a marble kitchen counter top ;)

My friend, Ching has been renovating her new house and has generously given me a rectangle slab of marble cut out from her bathroom sink. Actually, she was so generous that she gave me the bigger of the 2 marble slabs she had. Plus, she had her contractor chamfered the marble slabs so that there wouldn't be any rough edges.

So, while I do not have a marble counter top, I have the next best thing now... a nice slab of marble (very heavy though). I think I shall make me (and her, of course) a nice apple galette with it very soon ;)

Thanks much, Ching :)