Rhubarb choux

I'd seen Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets Show about pastries, and saw him make beautiful croquembouche and eclairs. Then two of my colleagues were making choux this week, and I wanted to have a go.
I wanted to make chocolate eclairs and set out to do so. But along the way got sidetracked with some rhubarb that needed to be cooked off, and thought about mixing the two things.
So I ended up with choux fingers, rhubarb cooked in sauternes, vanilla, orange, and made up some creme patissiere (Roux brothers on Patisserie recipe).
This evening I assembled it all. I had to cut the fingers in half to get the creme patissiere in, as I refused to cut my piping bag - i have the good one at home, and a smaller cheaper one in college, and I didn't want to hack about with the good one! So instead I cut open the choux, piped in the cream, laid the rhubarb on top, then sandwiched them back up and dusted with icing sugar.
They are really very nice to eat. Very very light, and some sharpness of rhubarb against the creme and pastry. Delicious.
Need to work on making them look a darn sight neater tho'.

Brown bread

Not to be outdone by the other day's dense brown bread, I set about trying again.
I mixed 300g wholemeal with 200g white flour. Left it to prove twice before shaping for baking. Then let it double in size on the baking tray, sprinkled with rye flour. Then slashed the top, and baked at 230C (realistically the hottest my oven can ever get) for 10 minutes then turned down the heat to 200C for another 30 mins.
I'm not getting the oven spring I'm after. Really want to get some stones for the oven to see if this helps. I sprayed the oven well as it went in, and after the 10 mins at a higher temperature. Haven't cut into it yet, so not sure of inside texture! Pretty sure its quite open crumb - will update.

Anchovy tomato rosemary penne

This was from River Cafe - and its a total star.
First add butter and olive oil to a pan, heat through then add sliced garlic.
Brown garlic, then add salted anchovies (washed and dried), and chopped rosemary. Mash it all into a paste.
Add tinned tomatoes. Cook down until you've got a good sauce consistency (40 mins).
Then add double cream and grated parmesan.
Boil up the penne in salted water - drain and add to the sauce. Serve with more parmesan.
It was just beautiful. The balance of flavours was gorgeous and it had huge umami ;) This will become a Wickeever kitchen classic.

Weekend treats from Wild Food Larder

We got crepinette - with venison, pork, wild garlic leaves, ewes milk cheese and toulouse sausages from Wild Food Larder stall in Bath Farmer's Market.
The crepinette were really really amazingly delicious. A fantastic treat.

Lamb stew, brown bread, cabbage

The lamb stew was made from this lamb stew recipe in the Guardian.
I tried to make it with veal stock. Which is a stupid thing to do on several fronts: a) this is LAMB stew b) I've never made veal stock.
I roasted the veal bones, before adding them to a pan with vegetables (celery, carrot, onion) and herbs (bay, thyme).
It smelled like hooves.
I refused to add tomato paste, or to roast the vegetables first before adding to the stock pot. This was all foolish.
I let it boil, then simmered for 3 hours.
It wasn't long enough. It still tasted of hooves.

So next time I will add tomato paste, roast vegetables, and simmer for at least 8 hours.

Also the lamb cut wasn't good (Sainsbury's not Waitrose). I won't stray again for meat - its just not worth the lower quality.

I also made the brown bread. From 100% wholemeal flour. That wasn't a brilliant idea either. It was very dense. Admittedly it is tasty - but the texture is too dense. A good experiment, but several things to learn: don't use 100% wholemeal flour, let it prove twice before shaping.

Dab, trout, hot salad

After seeing the Fish programmes on Channel 4, when I spotted Dab on sale in Sainsbury's, I bought one to try. It was very cheap, £1.11 for a fish.
I roasted it whole, along with some trout, in a little white wine, butter, lemon, bay leaf, s+p.
When I started to remove the flesh from the bone, there was a large section which was hard, and odd. I think its the roe. I skipped it, which meant there was very little eating to be had from the fish - you'd need lots of them. The white flesh was delicate and nice tho'.
I served it with Batavia lettuce, hot potatoes in lemon juice, zest, red wine vinegar, s+p - and the roasting juices. Tasty.

Roast wood pigeon

We picked up the wood pigeon from the farmer's market - for only £1.90 each, which is a bit of a bargain. They are beautiful!
I roasted them with a juniper berry, thyme leaf, salt/pepper, butter inside, and bacon over the top.
They took much longer than I thought - about 30 mins - and I don't think I did them very well! But they were still lovely - just need some more practise to get them lovely and tender.

Salty peanut caramel macarons, chocolate macarons, chestnut macarons

MACARONS!

Thanks to Ottolenghi for a terrific macaron recipe that creates the right texture - smooth on top, little bubbles at the base - the salty peanut caramel and chocolate is their recipe too. The chestnut is from www.foodbeam.com, minus the flour (an accident due to tiredness, which turned out ok in the end. cough).

The caramel is dulce de leche - that I made from sweetened condensed milk - using a saucepan to heat it up and turn it into a thick caramel. However, I went much to far and dried it out (only realised later when it cooled and started to set rock hard). I recovered this by adding more milk :) and heating it, and blitzing it.  Worked fine, was but was unnecessary.  Really interesting to work with a new substance tho'.

I sandwiched the chocolate macarons with ganache (as the recipe states), the chestnut ones with dulce de leche. The salty peanut ones - had peanuts and salt added to the dulce de leche caramel, surprisingly.

I think they need a bit more height, and the chestnut recipe needs tweaking. And I need to pay more attention when cooking them! I was knackered and managed to put icing sugar and caster sugar into the blender, for no constructive purpose. Sometimes you should just stop cooking. But I didn't, and these are pretty tasty :)

Hot cross buns, treacle tart, chestnut macaroons

This is another replay of the tart and buns that I've made before - but they were good, and its good to practise, to try and get consistent. Oh - and I put in three times the amount of fruit in the buns - and they were much better. Also, the crosses were leftover pastry from the tart, so not too conventional there.

The chestnut macaroons were from a lovely lovely blog: www.foodbeam.com - I searched for daquoise  and ended up on the site. Its exquisite, and certainly gives me something to aim for!!
The recipe is posted here: macaron a la chataigne (scroll down or search the page, its buried in there).
Unfortunately, I was too wussy about the whisking, and didn't go far enough, so I ended up with a cakey biscuit. Very whoopie pie ;) But not what I wanted. Resolved to try again another day - the idea of chestnuts in macarons is very very appealing.

Dolcelatte, bacon, wild garlic leaves pasta

This was a variation of the Dolcelatte, bacon and spinach pasta made a while ago - we picked up some wild garlic leaves from Andrew Sartain at Bath Farmer's market, and used them in the dish which had surprised us before by being excetionally tasty.
The wild garlic leaves gave a subtle and deeply delicious garlic flavour, really really good. Read more on how Andrew Sartain uses them at his blog: Wild Food Larder.