wild mushrooms, cupcakes, papardelle, pannacotta

Sunday 03 Oct
At home:
Wild mushrooms, ham ends, hand-made linguine
Very exciting mushrooms - from farmers' market. Shiitake, King Oyster, Pied Blue. Absolutely delicious. Also picked up the hand-made linguine which is lovely. Would like an attachment to my pasta maker to make linguine.
The ham ends are a bargain. 45p from waitrose of thick lumps of ham. Great value.

Panacotta.
Double cream, lemon, vanilla, gelatine. Then, more double cream with icing sugar.
Still cooling down. Will see if it sets. Not sure - looks pretty liquid. And tastes very sweet. Was supposed to include grappa, maybe that would have cut the sweetness. Raspberries will have to do.

 update: 8th Oct - pannacotta set very well, and the texture was brilliant. Deeply cushiony creamy, with enough bounce, but not like jelly. Great!

Papardelle pasta.
No semolina flour, so only tipo 00. Went cautious with the flour as the eggs were small. Resulted in soft dough, needed plenty of flour when putting through the pasta maker to stop it sticking together. Also more difficult to cut when soft. All done, 4 portions, ready for tomorrow.


Saturday 02 Oct.
At work:
Prep tomatoes, onions for salads. Prep carrots, fine green beans for mains.
- Tuna fish cake, scallop, pea & chilli puree
- Leek and potato soup
- Crostini - goats cheese, caramelised onions and cannelini bean & red pepper pate
- Waldorf salad - salad, apple, celery, walnuts. Yoghurt dressing
- Chicken salad - waldorf plus roast chicken breast. Yoghurt dressing
- Spring roll with salad
- Duck pate with warm crusty bread
- Grilled peach salad, with feta and mint

Marzipan, apricot and almond cake.
Roll out marzipan onto 20cm cake tin. Chop up apricots, spread over marzipan. Make cake mix - sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, almonds, almond essence. Spread over top of apricots - bake in low oven for 1hr.


At home:
Delicious simple bolognese. Onion, garlic, 10% fat mince, tomato puree, tomatoes. cooked long and low. Beautiful and simple.

Roast pork shoulder with sage, onion, apple.
Cut onion, place on roasting tray with sage. Place shoulder joint on top. Roast for 2 hours. Keep the onions and sage under the meat to stop them over-cooking/burning.
Cut up apple and place in roasting tray with 40 ish minutes to go.

Bertinet sourdough bread.
Ridiculously good. Chewy, tasty, sweet. Beautiful bread. Benchmark.


Friday 01 Oct

In College:
White chocolate and orange cupcakes (x48)
With buttercream & white chocolate icing.
With white chocolate squares.

Cupcakes = 3x sponge mix (weigh 3 eggs, add same weight sugar, flour, butter). Add 150g white chocolate chips. Zest 2 oranges, add to mix. Pipe into cupcake paper cases in muffin trays.

Buttercream = 1kg icing sugar, 600g butter. whip up butter in electric mixer, gradually add icing sugar, covering machine with tea towel to keep the powder down.
melt chocolate (under the hotplate) add half to buttercream. mix.

pipe icing onto cupcakes.

Spread remaining white chocolate onto silicon paper. Shape into a rectangle. Put on tray in the freezer.

Score across in 1.5" lines, to make squares. Take squares off with small palette - avoid touching with fingers. Place on cupcakes.
Get leftover ganache - pipe into small paper bag, pipe small dark chocolate spot at base of white chocolate square.