Baked apples, blueberry frozen yoghurt, lavender shortbread

Now this is the start of things to come. I have the ice-cream maker, so can make gelati, and I have Gordon Ramsey's Desserts book, so I can work through the repertoire of great classic desserts.
He has a recipe for Cumin shortbread, but I wanted to try it with lavender - just the smallest amount so it was fragrant but not soapy - lavender is really strong.

The shortbread was simply lovely. So light. I made 20 biscuits, and we just ate the lot. They were irresistable. I will try some with orange.

The apples were not as successful as I'd hoped. I chose braeburns and they were still quite firm after the cooking time. The one great thing was the peppercorns with the apple. The taste is phenomenal. Its subtle, but magically adds depth and warmth to the apple.
The recipe calls for brushing the apples with soft (but not melted butter) then rolling the apples in demerara sugar. I think I needed to embed the sugar better onto the apple, or use less butter, so that when they go in to bake,  the butter doesn't just slide off the apple. You want it to caramelise. I basted the apples in apple juice, with a touch of vin santo, and the taste is great, but I didn't get the golden caramelly surface I wanted. And at the end of the cooking time, the apples were too hard still. Some tweaks needed for next time.
I love the peppercorn idea tho' and loved getting the accompaniments together - the blueberry frozen yoghurt, and the divine shortbread. If I plan better which flavours go well together, this approach of dessert + gelati + biscuit is really fun.

Roast trout with fennel and lemon

I roasted the trout with lemon juice, olive oil, butter, seasoning, thyme, and spread over some finely sliced fennel. Wrapped it in foil and roasted for 25 minutes.

The fennel needed pre-cooking, and the texture wasn't soft and sweet as I'd wanted. Ideally I would blanch and griddle it first, then add to the fish parcel.

The dish was good tho' as the trout was just beautiful. Served with brown basmati and wild rice, kale and spinach and some leftover roasted tomatoes.

Puy lentils, Green lentils, Fennel salad, Roast tomatoes

We needed some health - so here we have Lentil salad: green lentils cooked in cumin and salt, with lemon, olive oil, parsley, spring onion, seasoning.

Puy lentils cooked with shallot, celery, veg bouillon, dried mushrooms (porcini, shiitake), marsala, rosemary, thyme, garlic.

Fennel salad: finely sliced fennel with lemon juice and olive oil, seasoning.

Roasted tomatoes: with olive oil, seasoning, touch of balsamic dressing (garlic, rosemary).

And the remaining rosemary and salt foccacia from the previous evening.

Foccacia, Bagels, cheeses and hams

After the taste jumble disaster, this was at the opposite end of the repast scale. The foccacia was light, not cakey, not doughy or heavy, and really fragrant with rosemary and sea salt. I was careful with the olive oil too, as too often this is too greasy and heavy. I was delighted with the result. Great thanks to The River Cottage bread book I got from the library.

The bagels were also a surprise success! Chewy and delicious - again not too heavy, and very tasty. And fun to make. I used Richard Bertinet's recipe from Crust and it was brilliant.

Then Matt got lovely cheeses and hams, and a special treat of some Sauternes confit :) We had Roquefort, Davidstow cheddar, Serrano ham from Spain, Italian roast pork loin with herbs. It all went very well together - perfectly delicious. And the bread was still warm and gorgeous. A feast!

Beef pie

Marinaded the beef overnight in red wine, rosemary, thyme, bay.
Then cooked onions, removed them from the pan, then tossed the beef in flour, and browned in the pan. Added marinade and herbs, some more wine and little water. And mushrooms. Cooked on the stove for about an hour.

I had some puff pastry in the freezer from making the sausage rolls the other week, so we defrosted that and it was ready to go. Brilliant.

I let the pie filling cool completely before putting the pastry over the top. Baked in a 200C oven for 40 minutes.
Unfortunately the bubbling gravy found a gap round the edge, and spilled out  a bit. No great horrors, but would have been better not to happen.

Served with some celeriac & potato mash and curly kale.

YUM.

Chocolate muffins

Thanks to Ottolenghi for this recipe for Chocolate cupcakes. Its perfect.
I knew I wanted a recipe which had depth and gooey-ness, probably with oil and treacle. This one was exactly it.
I then experimented a bit with the frosting, before just going with what is in the recipe, which suits the muffins perfectly: a rich ganache - chocolate, cream, butter, and a little vin santo (which threatened to make the chocolate seize, but was rescued with more cream. The recipe stated Amaretto, which with its higher alcohol content wouldn't have seized the chocolate).

In the end - the muffins have chunks of chocolate, are soft and gooey, and the slight flavour 'hole' made by the oil and treacle is filled entirely by the ganache on top. It all works out brilliantly - and cake and topping together make each aspect entirely better.

Spaghetti Bolognaise

After some mis-hits, I headed back to the classics to redeem my cooking mojo. Spaghetti Bolognaise. Its delicious and I know the way I like it:

Brown the onions and a clove of garlic.
Add the meat, and brown it.
Add red wine.
Add chopped fresh tomatoes.
Season.
Add basil.
Leave to simmer for at least 1.5 hours.

Serve with more basil, spaghetti and parmesan.

Methi Gosht, Sag Aloo

Made this the other week - and it was much nicer then! My cooking is a little off at the moment. And whilst its nice to know that sometimes it really is very good - its disappointing when you burn the pastries or mis-spice the curry (even just a bit).
This dish needed fresh tomatoes (not tinned) and less fenugreek and more clove and coriander. Next time I will remember.
The sag aloo would have been better if I'd cooked the spinach separately and combined at the last minute.

Mango sorbet

Mangoes were on special offer.

Unfortunately I was impatient, and should have left them to ripen more. But - by the time sugar was added, they were pretty good.

I used this BBC Food mango sorbet recipe:

Peeled and chopped 3 mangoes. Whizzed them up in the blender. Added icing sugar, lemon juice, then popped in the ice-cream machine, then into the freezer overnight.

Blueberry frozen yoghurt

I took one of my favourite breakfasts and made it into a dessert.

Whizzed up blueberries in the blender, passed through a sieve to remove skins and pips, added yoghurt and sugar, and popped it in the ice-cream machine. Then froze overnight. Done. Delicious.

Burnt pain au raisin

There are some days when you trip at the last hurdle. This is one of those days.
I made the croissant dough last night (recipe from Richard Bertinet's Crust ) and proved overnight in the fridge.
Then rolled and rested it.
Made creme patissiere (also from Bertinet's book, not Michel Roux's recipe that I've used before. I wanted to try a different one and see the difference. Bertinet's is thicker and less sweet, better for pastries?)
Rolled out and assembled the pain au raisin.
Proved for 2 hours.
Then put into a hot oven (220C). And then they burnt.  15 minutes was way too long. And the recipe states 18 - 20 mins. I must have had the oven too hot. At that temp our oven loses some definition I think - making the difference between 220 and 240 hard to tell. Must be careful with this in future.
Or perhaps something else in the process? Don't know.
They'll still taste ok - but disappointing. Will make more ;) you know, to test.

Breakfast of champions pt23873493

Home-made marmalade, Bertinet bread, lemon tea. Fantastic breakfast. Fantastic.

Dolcelatte, bacon, spinach pasta

This was a fridge scrounge meal that was startlingly good.
I picked up some Dolcelatte cheese a while ago as it was going cheap. The bacon we'd had for a little while, and spinach needed using up. There was also a little bit of creme fraiche. Et voila.
Fry up the bacon, add the spinach. Break up the cheese into small lumps, add to the creme fraiche.
Once pasta is cooked - add the creme/cheese, stir well to get the cheese to melt a little, then add the bacon/spinach. Season well. Done.
The salty bacon went so well with the blue cheese. Lovely lovely.
I'd weighed the pasta so portions were good - you were satisfied but not 'full'. Its a very rich dish, so you don't want too much.

Marmalade

Here it is! The seville oranges have been made into marmalade. I followed the River Cafe recipe, from their book River Cafe Pocket Books: Puddings, Cakes and Ice-creams, which I can't recommend highly enough. Brilliantly inspiring.

I soaked the oranges in water for 2 days.
Then gently simmered them for 4 hours.
Then (perhaps mistakenly) left them on the stove for a night and day (as life got in the way), and made up the marmalade in the evening.
By this time the oranges had collapsed onto themselves and were thoroughly soft.

I took out all the pips and courser fibres, and chopped into 1cm pieces. No fine shred here! Then weighed all the flesh, worked out what 2/3 of the weight was, and weighed out that much caster sugar.

Put sugar and fruit into a pan and simmered it for 30 minutes. I tested to see if there was a 'slow run' of juice when placed on a cold plate: bingo.

I cooled it for 5 minutes then put into sterilized jars (i put mine in the steamer. made them very easy to get out and handle).

I put plastic covers on straightaway, then read the instructions which said leave them til the jam has completely cooled. Not to worry.

Then left it overnight to cool.

In the morning - we had toast and marmalade - and it is really really very nice indeed.
I think I'm allowed to join the WI now right?

Hot trout salad with fennel

 Set up the trout to roast in the oven - wrapped in foil with lemon, salt, olive oil, pepper, parsley, fennel seeds.

Steam some Charlotte potatoes.

Make a dressing with lemon juice, lemon zest, red wine vinegar, olive oil, seasoning.

Assemble the salad - spinach, baby leaves from living salad box, fennel - finely sliced.



When the potatoes are cooked, immediately coat them in the dressing. Then add potatoes and dressing over the greens.
Flake the trout, and pour the roasting juices from the foil into the salad.

Place the trout on top of the salad. Garnish with long stems of parsley.

The fennel and potatoes pick up a lot of the dressing flavour, and the fish was superb. A light, tasty winter salad.

Seville orange sorbet

There are several food items I get excited about. And this is one of them:
there's the new flavour of seville orange; the new flavour of Vin Santo; and the new machine (ice-cream maker).
That's a lot of schizz to be excited about.


I saved up my tips from the cafe and got the ice-cream maker. Kerching.
I froze the ice-cream maker bowl overnight then made this recipe from Waitrose for Seville Orange Sorbet. I swapped Cointreau for Vin Santo- as we had the latter in the house and I thought it would be delicious. It is. It adds a herbal note which is just gorgeous.

The sorbet set to a good consistency in the machine, then we put it in the freezer overnight. This evening, it was perfect: set so you could scoop it, not an ice-block, and really really cold.

The oranges are deeply deeply flavoursome - sharp, bitter - alongside the sugar and depth of flavour of the Vin Santo. The freezing temperature cuts through the sugar taste too, and its all balanced. This is a total winner. One of my favourite things yet.

More sorbets, frozen yoghurts and ice-creams on the way :) tho' summer time (and the fruits) will clearly allow it come into its own. Very exciting.

Grilled peppers, chorizo, spinach pasta

Time to throttle back the experimentation and just get on with some tasty nutritious food. I've joined the gym, am back in training, and pasta is back on the menu - at least more frequently as has been the case.
First up today - chorizo from Spain via Elantha, with grilled peppers and spinach.
Sweet peppers go fantastically well with the chorizo and the spinach is tasty, provides great colour and is good for you. Rock on.

Seville oranges

These caused not insignificant amounts of excitement :)

I couldn't wait to see what the flavour was like, and how it differed from regular oranges. I'd heard that they were bitter - but they are orange bitter, not mouth wincingly sour. Bitterness is a fantastic taste, and the energy of orange flavour alongside, is just superb. I'm totally hooked.

The label said sorbet and marmalade. Can't argue with that.

Roast lamb, with rosti, greens and a red wine sauce

I roasted the lamb (mini leg joint) with garlic and rosemary. Altho' I copied a recipe that said to insert the lamb into the meat, by making small cuts. The short length of time this joint needs is not enough to caramelise or sweeten the garlic enough, so it tasted too raw for me.

The rosti I made because we had celeriac, potatoes and jerusalem artichokes ( i prefer the french name - topinambour - its slightly shorter, tho not much - than the english). I grated each of these and fried slowly in butter and olive oil.

I placed the rosti on a bed of spring greens which had just been steamed.

The sauce was a very last minute thing, and really not quite what I wanted! I put some red wine and some redcurrant jelly into the roasting pan, picked up all the meat juices, then reduced to a sauce. It was tasty - but rich - and with the slight rawness of the garlic - it all didn't quite sing.

Still - tasty enough.

Blueberries yoghurt walnuts

Its so simple, and so delicious. One of my favourite things.

Jerusalem artichoke and sausage risotto

A rich risotto for a winter's day.
I love jerusalem artichokes, especially in risotto. And we add sliced up chipolatas just because we like sausage.

Spanish treats

Our lovely friend Elantha delighted us with some gifts from Spain :) :) Tetilla, chorizo and jamon. YES. The cheese and ham variations never tire for me. Thank you very much nice lady.

College cakes

First day back in the kitchen at college - because of disastrous floods that have wrecked the kitchens!
It was a fun morning - we made a light fruit cake and some cupcakes - topped with jam and coconut, or buttercream and citrus peel. They were so cute I bought them and took them home.

Pizzas! fennel lemon salad

Pizzas are always a bit of an excitement. The dough is just so lovely when super fresh.
I made two types -
 - Tomato, mozzerella, chorizo, roasted pepper, basil.
 - Tomato, pecorino, mozzerella, salami, rocket

The dough was from River Cafe (as before) and includes rye flour - which gives great flavour.
The ones with roasted peppers were exceptionally delicious. The sweetness alongside the chorizo was very good.

I also made a fennel salad alongside to cut through the pizza sweetness and saltiness: with very very finely sliced fennel, lemon juice, olive oil, seasoning. Sharp, cutting - just what I wanted.

Jewel cake, stollen

My aunt made me the most wonderful present - a Jewel Cake.
It has whole brazil nuts, dates, cherries, stem ginger, crystallised fruits - including pineapple, surrounded by very little cake :) It looks spectacular, and called jewel because when you slice it, the light comes through the fruits like jewels. Divine.
Oh - and some stollen ;) that we had stashed in the freezer. It survives freezing exceptionally well!

Methi Gosht and bombay potatoes

Carrying on with the curry theme from yesterday (see chicken almond curry)- I wanted to start to try and get the Methi Gosht - which is our favourite curry from Curry Manjil in Belsize Park. It is greatly missed by us now in Bath. Sometimes its tempting to drive all the way up the M4.
So - its time to try and get somewhere with this lamb and fenugreek curry.
This was delicious - tho' I'd like to get some fenugreek leaves - I only could find seeds. Still - it had depth of flavour, and the sauce was good and thick. Will keep trying in variations to see how close to Curry Manjil we can get.

Chicken almond curry

After all the cooking of the Family Feast - I wanted some totally different food. Curry.
I decided on a nice, but hot, chicken, yoghurt, almond curry.
Overall - the sauce wasn't thick enough, and I don't like cream in it (i added to try and thicken the sauce). Just yoghurt next time, and the onions need to be blitzed once cooked, so there is a puree (again, will help thicken the sauce).
its all about the sauce. Flavour good tho' :)
And I really like the brown basmati rice, sprinkled through with wild rice. Great texture and flavour.

Family feast

So my family had a gathering on the 8th Jan, and I volunteered to cook. For 9 people.
My menu was this:

Snacks:
 - 2 large sourdough bread loaves
 - chicken liver parfait
 - roasted chestnuts

Mains:
 - goat's cheese twice-baked souffles
 - balsmic caramelised red onion and goat's cheese tartlets
 - roasted lamb shoulder (with garlic, rosemary)
 - roasted butternut squash
 - winter coleslaw (fennel, celeriac, radish, carrot, cabbage, yoghurt, mint, parsley, dill, lemon)
 - hot potato salad (olive oil, lemon zest/juice and red wine vinegar)

Pudding:
 - Sticky toffee pudding
 - Lemon and passionfruit cake
 - Chocolate macaroons

My aunt has an aga, so everything was cooked on that - with some outstanding results, and some no-shows.
The meat was the tastiest I've ever roasted. The type of heat from the aga had a spectacular effect on the meat - it was tender, with no effects of being overcooked in some areas, nor any hint of hot spots. Astonishingly evenly cooked. And the texture was incredible.

The butternut squash couldn't get hot enough to caramelise properly, so it was starchy. And the souffles didn't 'pop' - which could have been a whole host of things ;)

Overall - I just wanted everyone to have things they liked, for vegetarians to not feel like second class citizens, and for it to look bright and exciting on the plate as well as zingy, deep, creamy, savoury in taste. I was very pleased with the results.

There was 2 solid days (and nights) cooking. Was interesting to work out where the time gets eaten up, and what its like to cook for 9 people, from a distance, have to transport everything (kit, food) and work on a very unfamiliar oven.

I think everyone liked it!! :)

Sausage rolls

It was definitely time to try puff pastry.
I'd saved the Lescure butter (low water content, unsalted french butter) for this purpose.
The process was really enjoyable, because the pastry becomes so beautiful: smooth pale delicate but robust. Great. Folding, resting, laminating the fat through the pastry was a lovely process.
I bought some 'premium' sausagemeat - slowly cooked some onions with thyme and added to the meat.
Then put together the pastry and meat, and glazed with egg wash.
I found cutting the sausage rolls quite tricky - there is a lot of fat (necessarily) in sausage meat which makes slicing through a bit difficult, so they got a little misshapen where I'd pressed to tightly.
The taste was delicious - really really deeply savoury. The meat juices that come out and cook on the bottom (little black bits) are packed with flavour, and it was all well seasoned.
As a dish they're pretty dirty :) but definitely tasty and fun.

Oh! and the pastry was very fine. Light, flaky, nicely puffy. And half of it is now in the freezer. More on the way...

Croissants - ham and cheese

Matt makes the best cheese/ham/toast concoctions. Perfect balance of cheese, ham, seasoning. He made up these little leftover croissants. Just look at them :) superb!
The ham was the christmas gammon (still going). Croissants homemade the other day. Genius.

Guinea fowl rice

This was an experiment that didn't quite come off.
I found some lovely guinea fowl legs (thigh and drumstick) in the butcher and decided I wanted a light but flavoursome meal.
I browned then roasted the guinea fowl, then added it to the rice, herb salad that I'd made before from Ottolenghi. But the sesame oil  didn't work with the richness of the guinea fowl - much better with the relative blandness of chicken.
The meat was beautiful, and its good to experiment, but I won't repeat this one!
The dressing on the dish was: lemon juice, fish sauce, sesame oil, olive oil. Added to mint, parsley. Needed coriander to lift and marry the flavours together.

Croissants - almond

This was the real point behind making the croissants - they were a vehicle for the creme d'amande I had leftover from the stollen. It was so good that i couldn't face throwing it away - so decided to make some croissants for it.
I made these at the end of a long cooking day - preparing food for 9 people at the weekend, and mainly being preoccupied with these - and they are just lovely.
I'm a happy girl.

(to be very honest, the creme d'amande was very slightly old tasting, but really, it still couldn't knock the joy). Will make properly again.

Croissants

At last! They're here! I've been prepping these for two days now. And they are a vision :) despite being cut a little small, and a smidge overdone, I am very pleased with these - the flavour is delicate, not overpowering or too rich.

I proved the dough in the fridge for 2 days. It was supposed to only be overnight, but events kept me away from the dough. And today - college was closed as their water pipes have burst :S and flooded, so I had some time to devote to these.

The dough looked on the boundary of being overproved, but turned out good.
I found it difficult to get the dough thin enough, it was very springy and kept springing back into itself. Need to find a way of managing it better. Must make it do what I want, not what it wants.

The process is really fun. You make a dough, and leave it to prove very slowly, so the flavour is good.
Then laminate the dough with cold butter - basically making a flaky pastry with dough as the base. I never realised this was what croissants were before :)
Handling the dough was a joy - it felt light and smelled great. Then i cut it and shaped it, went for a run while it proved, then baked it off. Bit of a trial in my very onesided oven, and slightly overdone because i made them a bit small but kept the cooking time the same.
All in all - it was a full time job:
 - first prove for the dough - overnight
 - laminating - rolling, resting (30 mins), x3
 - cutting shaping
 - proving - 2 hours
 - bake - 18 mins :)
But worth it.

Roast pork sandwiches

Roast shoulder of pork, stuffed with onions, sage, apple.

It took so long to roast, that we'd eaten the potatoes and greens. So late at night, I made up some slaw, and we had it on homemade sourdough.
It was actually the best way we could have eaten it.

The slaw was:
 - romaine leaves finely shredded,
 - matchsticks of apple
 - lemon juice
 - creme fraiche
 - seasoning.

The apple freshness of the slaw was delicious with the roasted apple in the stuffing, and the meat was succulent. Eating this made my whole body relax :)

Lemon drizzle cake

3 eggs, same weight butter, sugar, SR flour. Added lemon zest. Also added baking powder. I can't really work out SR flour, and will probably stick to plain with bicarbonate of soda and baking powder added. You know what's going on then. However, this one worked very nicely - really very light sponge and I added zest of 2 lemons, so it is really zingy.
Once baked, poured over juice of the two lemons, mixed with 85g of caster sugar.
The tartness is fantastic against the soft pillowy, buttery sponge. Very fine.

Burgers!!!

Yeah. We rocked some new year burger action. On homemade sourdough, good slab of blue cheese, tomato, lettuce, burger griddled. Delicious!!

Sourdough clock

In order to work out when i had time to make sourdough, i made a clock to help me. It has all the steps - you just match up the start time to the hour, and it tells you what time the rest of the steps will happen. Simples!

Sourdough, Parfait, Cider

Chicken liver parfait, made a good 10 days ago, sourdough made today (altho the ferment started a good 2 weeks ago), cider. Just came back from a long New Year's Day walk.

The parfait flavour has improved tremendously - the garlic has mellowed to a lovely sweetness, and any bitterness of the livers has now disappeared. I didn't know if it would still be ok after all this time, and was leaving it as a test - and this is a proper delight :)

The bread has good flavour, probably helped by now having (christmas present) a set of very accurate scales to make weighing the salt more accurate. And better structure - I kept back some of the water asked for in the recipe, was firm with rolling the dough into a ball, and proved it in a steeper sided bowl.

New year's sourdough

Two beautiful sourdough loaves :) A good start to the year!