Mousse au Chocolat.

Santa’s brought me a book, a super posh, velvet covered book with recipes from Laduree. I’ve been to Laduree once, back in the times when I thought that making macarons requires a PhD in pastry and nobody as amateur as myself will ever be able to make them.  That was a good 4-5 years ago, with Moka, who took us there and treated us to some superb pieces of patisserie   I’d love to do that tour again, now that I’m so much more confident. Might need someone to restrain me from licking the shop windows though.

I’ve marked a couple of must- do recipes from that book. Last night I asked Lisa if they fancied a pizza and beer sort of evening with Andy, they did, so obviously we needed a dessert.  Chocolate mousse was made, easy, delicious and quick.  If all the recipes work the way the mousse did, £17 well spent by Santa.

150 g of good quality dark chocolate was chopped and melted with 40 g of butter, then cooled to room temperature. 4 eggs separated, the whites whipped with 40 g of sugar, the yolks gently beaten. That was a new and different thing to do for me- beaten yolks went in bit by bit to the whipped whites, then  about 1/4 of those went into the chocolate and butter mixture to loosen it. Having done that all of the chocolate got chucked into the whites, gently incorporated  with a whisk. Then into the pipping bag with a star tip, 30 mins on the fridge and then ready to pipe into the serving dishes. It’s been enjoyed. And will be made again. 🙂

Festive macaroons.

Lisa’s having us for drinks this afternoon, I volunteered to make something sweet. There’s Bailey’s cheesecake for the grown ups and 2 types of Christmassy macaroons, both from mojewypieki.com.  The only change I made was the lemon filling I used- Dorota suggested mint one for the trees, I’m not a fan. Snowmen could do with some more finesse, but the trees I love. 🙂

Now awaiting the bright red food colourant from Amazon and there will be more macaroons. 20161209_164018

A disastrous nasi goreng.

I’m going to have to create a new category- the dishes that ended up in the bin. That was just unpleasant and it hardly ever happens to me-my food is hardly ever so bad, that it’s thrown away. It was today.

It was a recipe from Ken Hom’s “100 quick stir fry recipes”. I bought a jar of shrimp paste especially for it, never used it before and never will again. Man, it was vile!!! I only added it to the wok and the smell was just wrong. It also added the texture to the dish, that Florek flushed down with lots of beer, even though we both only had one forkfull. It was annoying, as I wasted ingredients, the prawns especially could have been enjoyed in lots of other ways. They’re in the bin together with that crappy paste.

While we were busy agreeing on how bad the dish was, Izzie spilled carrot juice all over her bathed self and the carpet- amazing evening……

Ken- we have a problem, you and I. :-/

Chocolate and hazelnut panna cotta.

Inspired by the current series of Masterchef.  One of my favourite flavour combinations, a must try! I looked for a recipe online, found a few, didn’t completely follow any. Followed my gut and my taste. For 4 panna cottas I used 250 ml of double cream and 150 ml of milk, which I heated up with a tsp of vanilla sugar and about 3 heaped tsps of nutella. Possibly a bit more, as I kept on adding and tasting, but roughly that. 1,5 leaf of gelatine managed to set it just right. Chilled in the fridge since last night, to be enjoyed this evening after sushi. Very good, potential for a Christmas dessert.