Monthly Archives: April 2011
Tuesday night doesn’t get better than that.
There wasn’t a great deal of cooking and skills involved tonight. I went to Waitrose and when passing by the meat counter I heard a fillet steak calling my name loud and clear and when I looked at them they said- ” We’re here!!!! where have you been? buy us, buy us now!!!” (yes, I did have 3 glasses of wine before turning on my laptop). 🙂
The dinner consisted of roasted potatoes, roasted they way Hugh F- T likes them, quickly boiled for 5 minutes and then thrown on a hot tray with hot olive oil, nicely seasoned and roasted off until nice, brown, lovely and soft inside and crispy outside. The fillets went on a griddle pan to be cooked medium rare and served with béarnaise ( shop bought), the asparagus was guickly steamed and thrown on the pan with the steaks and seasoned while it finished off and finally just a simple rocket salad with pine nuts. And a glass of Shiraz. One of the nicest meals I can think of.
Gnocchi bake.
Gnocchi have been sitting in the fridge, bought as a meal for a person, whose girlfriend works in the evenings. Girlfriend decided she actually felt like gnocchi, so she made a nice, thick sauce based on fried pancetta lardons, fresh celery, mushrooms, canned tomatoes, a good splash of sweet wine, fresh oregano and basil and thickened it with cream and flour for extra healthiness. 🙂
I preboiled the gnocchi for a minute or so before they went into the sauce, all nicely covered, then placed in individual baking dishes, covered with grated parmesan and baked for about 30 minutes.
Served with rocket, avo and parmesan salad and a nice glass of vino rosso. Yum.
Lime pie.
I just realized I’m being a bit boring here, all there is for the last few weeks are desserts. Should maybe get back to savoury stuff some time soon. Tonight though I went back to ” The Art of Pastry ” book and made a lime pie. Very pleased with it, I must say, it’s very light and limey, as expected.
The pastry base, baked in the newly purchased tin ( together with a new pair of jeans to cheer myself up ) was made with 225 g of plain flour, 115 g of butter, 2 egg yolks, 30g of sugar and a bit of cold water. Blind baked for 20 minutes.
The filling like this I tried for the first time ever, as I always associated condensed milk with things like toffee sauce and here they told me to whip it up with the egg yolks. And it worked a treat! 4 yolks, a 400g tin of condensed milk, a juice and rind of 3 limes, 2 tbsp of sugar I whipped together bit by bit, then added whipped egg whites and mixed in. I then baked it all for 20 minutes in 160 Celsius. It’s risen, but then sat down when cooled, still ended up with lovely, moist, light and fluffy texture. I finished it off with some whipped cream, bits of lime and mint. Will be making it again! 🙂
Green tea raging success!
It’s Florek’s birthday today. I’ve cooked him a menu he asked for and even pulled off a proper Bento Box!!! The plan for green tea ice cream was far more ambitious, I did ask at work how to make it, I did go to Japan Centre on Picadilly to get the green tea powder, but eventually settled for Alex’s suggestion to simply mix the good quality vanilla ice cream with green tea powder. Yummmmmm!!!!!!! The fondant recipe is the same, today used Valrhona chocolate, picked by Florek in Waitrose.
It looked like this….
Blueberry and almond tart(let)
I love the way it looked in the latest issue of Good Food, so I made it tonight. Two small ones for us for dessert and a large one to take to work tomorrow to see what the Masterchefs of Dinings will make of it.
The pastry base I’m very happy with, it’s thin and crispy, just like it should be. Made with 200g of plain flour, 100g of butter and a bit of cold water, well worked and blind baked for 20 minutes. The filling is made of 90g of soft butter creamed with 180 g of caster sugar, 2 whole beaten eggs, 180 g of almonds- that’s in the ideal world, but Oluta only had a small packet of ground almonds, so topped it up with ground pecans, worked great! I used about 250g of overpriced blueberries, mixed most of them into the filling, the rest scattered on top and pressed in lightly. It baked in 190 Celsius for about 45 minutes. Finished off with icing sugar. Nutty and sweet.
