Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith are doing something together for Waitrose, hence lots of interesting recipe leaflets in the shop, that takes a huge chunks of my earnings…. 🙂

This is the first by Heston I ever tried and it worked.

I bought the pastry ( and some baking beans for that occasion) and baked it off to have it ready for my first ever lemon curd. I used 2 whole eggs, an egg yolk, beaten, a juice and zest of 2 whole unwaxed lemons, 110 g of sugar and vanilla sugar and 110 g of butter, put it all in the pan on a small heat and stirred with a whisk for about 15 minutes, not letting it simmer. Then, when it does simmer, after 5 seconds took it off the hear, put it through a fine sieve and covered with cling film, chilled in the fridge.

When my pastry base cooled down I transferred the curd onto it and only then tasted it for the first time- loved it!!!!

As seen on the photo, there is a room for improvement presentation wise, but as I made it from half a portion, there was too much pastry and not enough curd, next time will make it for some more people and it will be beautiful. Served with whipped cream and fresh raspberries.

Ewa told me a while ago, having first seen my blog, there is a film I absolutely have to see. I bumped into it in HMV yesterday, watched it, loved it, cooked from a little cookbook attached to it and made Florian watch it tonight. It’s called ” Julia & Julie”, awesome movie.

Being off today, I had all this time to go to Waitrose, do my shopping and then make the stew as well as the dessert.

First things first, though.I fried a few bacon rashers, put them aside in the casserole. Then I browned a few chunks of beef, not too many, as I cook for two most of the time. Put it in the casserole, seasoned well and dusted with flour. In all those meat and bacon juices I sauteed some roughly chopped onions and carrots, added to the rest, then poured some good red wine and beef stock over,just enough to cover the meat,  added some crushed garlic, tomato paste,thyme,  a bay leaf and stuck in the oven for about 3 hours to let it cook off slowly. Now, in Julia’s recipe there are some fried mushrooms and onions added by the end, I added some of my quality dried mushrooms, known in England as porcini and being damn expensive. I’m a lucky Oluta, who has a big jar of them in my cupboard, thanks to my parents who are keen mushroom pickers and supply me every year with more than I can use. The flavour is magnificent.

I served my beef with mashed potatoes, for which I use a potato ricer, lots of butter and some seasoning. We found the very rich sauce against the nearly sweet flavour of the mash very pleasant.

To be done again. 🙂