Monthly Archives: June 2019

Baking

Chocolate and strawberry tart.

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I was rudely awaken early this morning by the cat being sick under our bed. Sleeping was done, so having checked the news and stuff I looked at mojewypieki.com for some strawberry inspiration. My small strawberry patch in the garden is currently giving us a bowl of berries every day, the net helps to keep the birds away. I found the tart called “Truskawkowy Las” (Strawberry Forest), loved the look of it and made it for tomorrow evening, Keava and Simon will jump the fence to join us for a few glasses of wine and extras. Long overdue!

Short, chocolate pastry, quick and easy to make with kitchen aid. 160 g of plain flour, 30 g of cocoa, 60 g of icing sugar, 100 g of cold, unsalted butter and a pinch of salt. 1 whole egg brought it all together nicely. It rested in the fridge for 30 minutes, then got blind baked in 190 degrees for 10 minutes, followed by 20 minutes with no beans.

Chocolate creme pat was a first for me today, nice little number, not too chocolatey, just right. 3 egg yolks beaten well with 70 g of sugar. 20 g of both plain and potato starch added, while 300 ml of milk was getting nice and hot. Milk slowly added to the mixture, returned to the heat, stirred constantly till thickened, off the heat. 90 g of dark chocolate added, it melted quickly, needed some help of electric whisk as lumps appeared. While still warm it went onto the tart case, smoothed out, what was left in the pan was enjoyed by a certain chocolate enthusiast. 🙂

The strawberries on top are ours, as mentioned, raspberries from Co Op, mint from the garden.

Nice. 🙂

Good Food

Making room for more truffles.

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Last Saturday we braved the rain ( summer’s been cancelled this year, by the look of it) and went to check out Daylesford Farm near Kingham, a place recommended by Christina. I knew nothing would be cheap there, but we still went and blew 60 quid. First thing I noticed on the car park was a Tesla charging station, that said it all about the clientelle…. 🙂

It’s all organic in there, apparently, nothing wrong with that, there’s a lovely selection of bread, there’s butcher’s, some fish, cured meats- at eye watering prices- as well some lovely stuff for home. My favourite place was a little cold cheese room. We got some of their own organic cheddar, some blue cheese and a small piece of a phenomenal truffle number imported from Italy, called Moliterno.

We had most of those cheeses on Saturday evening, laughing out loud in the face of the diet!!! But last night I grated the remaining piece of the truffle cheese onto the pizza, alongside mozzarella di buffala and parmesan. And finally, almost exactly a year after purchasing it, I used up one of my whole truffles from La Bottega di Tartuffo in Lucca. Time to do that was high, as I’ll be there next month again. Beautiful pizza, earthy with mushrooms, simple, cheesy. Top marks!