Monthly Archives: February 2011

Dessert

Banoffee pie.

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Still working on it and dragging on about how good it is.  10 out of 10 today, really!

The pastry cases are lovely and crumbly, I used 75g plain flour, 50g butter and blitzed it. Then added 25g of sugar and pressed together for soft dough. With this amount of butter I didn’t bother buttering the tins, love the way they turned out after 30 minutes in the oven, the temperature was around 160 Celsius.

The toffee filling took 100g of condensed milk, 50 g of butter and the same amount of brown sugar, with a large spoon of golden syrup and simmered it for about 20 minutes.

Filled the pastry cases with it, while still warm and left to cool. Topped it up with sliced banana, squeezed some lemon juice on top, and finally whipped cream and a sprinkle of dark chocolate.

Very sweet and very rich.

Dessert

Baklava.

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As I thought yesterday, I ran to get some nuts and butter today and got cracking.  As usual with the things I’m making for the first time ever, I compared a few recipes online and chose what I liked most of all of them.

And so I went for the nuts I like most- pistachios, pecans , almonds and hazelnuts. Having blitzed them not too finely I added lots of cinnamon and a bit of sugar.

When assembling the baklava I prepared the tray with baking paper, buttered it, then 5 layers of filo, each buttered, then a layer of nut mixture, 5 layers of filo, buttered thoroughly again, nuts and 5 layers of filo, all the same procedure, except that the last layers I slit slightly, it was supposed to make the slicing easier I think, but also the visual effect, when first peeked into the oven  after 15 minutes made it worth while- it looked great, as the pastry puffed up slightly and started to become golden.

I baked it in about 150 degrees Celsius for 40 minutes and while that was happening, I made the syrup- simmered some water with sugar, about 10 cloves,lemon rind,  at the end added a juice of half a lemon and a small spoon of vanilla paste. The syrup took about 20 minutes.

Having taken the lovely golden beauty out of the oven I pricked it in between the diamonds with a sharp knife and then spooned the syrup all over. I intended to let it all soak in before tasting, but I couldn’t. It’s lovely, nutty, sweet, but not heavy and not sickly like some shop bought baklava.

A good pat on the back. 😉

Good Food, Room for improvement

Spring rolls

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Filo pastry has been bought today and I thought it would be nice to make some spring rolls. The filling was a veggie one, maybe next time I’ll play around with some seafood. This time it was a mix of bean sprouts, carrots, mushrooms and leeks, all chopped to look like sprouts.I quickly fried them on the wok and flavoured with soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and sugar. When it cooled slightly I wrapped it in filo, not tight enough, cause they were a bit too oily- and deep fried them for about 3 minutes. I served them with some Blue Dragon sweet chilli dipping sauce. They were very nice, for a debut.

With the rest of the filo I think I will try to make a baklava tomorrow.

Eaten out, Good Food

First taste of Dinings

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I had a trial shift at Dinings last night.

Dinings is a place that looks like a bunker, it’s tiny, 11 tables downstairs, 6 at the sushi bar, tiny kitchen, everything is tiny. But the food……my God. It felt like coming home, although I  didn’t come for dinner ( damn! ) but for a trial. Surely thanks to the Chefs’ training at Nobu the food looked incredible and smelled just like heaven. Even the smell of  hot sake, of which I’ve never been a fan was pleasant. The smokey kitchen when tobanyaki was getting prepared- down the memory lane. But most of all the sushi. According to Fuku san, whom I’ve known from Ubon, I’ve done a good job last night, so I was pleasantly surprised with  2 small boxes of sushi to take home with me. The smell of this beautifully flavoured rice was killing me on the train back home. There was also a salad, green salad they serve with some chilli dressing with tempura prawns as big as  a small fist, the image of it is still in my head.

Well, whether I’ve done well enough to get the job I will find out when they call me.

Tick, tock..

Good Food

Friday night variety.

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Our tonight’s dinner was very simple, but what we loved about it was a variety of different flavours and textures on the table. So there were home made sausage rolls, raw sausages wrapped up in puff pastry, seasoned with fennel seeds and covered in parmesan and then baked off. There were potato wedges, spicy with cayenne pepper. There were  marinated red peppers, that I stuffed with chunks of cheddar and warmed up until the cheese melted ( next time I will close them with toothpicks, so that the cheese stayed inside), sooooo simple, but surprisingly yummy. And there was a rocket, avo and parmesan salad. And some nice English ale to go with it all. Yum.