Monthly Archives: May 2020

Good Food

BBQ.

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Last week we decided it was time to join the club of The People Who BBQ. We rather enjoy membership of the Tesla Owners Club, where drivers greet each other on the road just because they also drive one. Not everywhere, mind, Cheltenham area, Cotswolds, further down the A40 the greetings don’t work anymore.

Lidl had these little beauties on offer from Thursday morning. At £80 a piece. Today, on Sunday there were none left!

But we’ve got one. We’ve tried it a couple of times already, there were great sausages, burgers and also chicken skewers- mind blowing ones! The smoky flavour is just unbeatable!

This afternoon some lovely prawns made a debut. They sat in the marinade of garlic, chili flakes, salt, parsley, coriander, lime zest and juice and olive oil since early lunch time and later on they got grilled and were devoured with some lovely French rose. So much of that rose , in fact, that I’m having trouble spelling!!! But they were some of the best shrimps I’ve eaten in a long time. Next weekend Mariusz is coming over, there will be steaks and more grilling. It’s going to be epic! 🙂

Baking, Good Food

To carb or not to carb.

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So, to continue our quest to eat less carbs, I have taken out my strong bread flour out today and decided to see if I can bake some baguettes. I can indeed, it turns out. 🙂

From 500g of flour, 20 g of fresh yeast and a splash of water I’ve made a starter, then added 10g of salt into the remaining flour and slowly added a bit less than 350 ml of cold water. Once all the ingredients were combined, kitchen aid did the great job of working the dough for about 7 minutes. It was quite sticky and runny, but was left to prove in a square tin lined with cling film and lightly oiled, covered and sat on the garden table till more than doubled in size. Then 4 small baguettes were formed. I watched a youtube video on how to handle baguette dough. The recipe I was using was Paul Hollywood’s, but I didn’t want to mess up all this lovely air in the dough and will be using a special French bread tin, that Maz has ordered for us.

Shaped baguettes were proving for another hour and a bit, then transferred onto the lined baking trays, slashed with a razor and dusted with flour. Baked in 220 degrees for 25 minutes with a tray of boiling water on the bottom of the oven for crust.

So, 4 small baguettes were done, 2 were eaten on the spot by the 3 of us, with butter. Third one accompanied the courgettini for dinner, 4th was given to Keava.

We loved them. And will be making them again, it wasn’t all that difficult.

Courgettini were also fantastic. And I was right- a rich, garlicky tomato sauce, spiked with chili and topped with parmesan is the way to go. This dish will also be made again and often, maybe not always alongside a tone of fresh bread!

Baking

Cholla loaf.

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Giggling, when I think about it. As a VERY SERIOUS ATTEMPT to cut down on carbs we’re getting friendly with Tom Kerridge ” lose weight” kinda theme, today at lunch and dinner, but in the meantime it was Paul Hollywood’s cholla. 🙂 Another excellent loaf! I made a start on it, when Izzie said she didn’t have brioche in a while, I think brioche from this very book might be next.

This loaf, when made again will either be cut into 2 loaves or the ingredients will be halved, after the second proving I had a monster on my hands! 500 g of strong bread flour, 20 g fresh yeast, 25 g of sugar, 10 g of salt, 30 g unsalted, soft butter. 2 eggs, beaten. 50 ml warm milk, less than 150 ml of water- I stopped adding when I was happy with what I was looking at in the bowl of the kitchen aid. I’ve made a starter with some of that flour, all the yeast, some sugar and milk and then whacked all the ingredients into the bowl and let KA do the work. Proved for over an hour, knocked down, plaited, glazed with some egg and left to prove again. This one took less than 30 minutes and it more than doubled. It baked for about 25 minutes in 200 degrees. Tastes phenomenal with butter and good blueberry jam. I am already looking forward to breakfast and it’s not even 9pm. Those extra 3 kg are going friggin’ nowhere. :-/

We’ve tried our new spiralizer too. Great way to treat courgettes, especially when we have them growing in the garden in a couple of months, but the whole dish today did not make us excited. It tasted …healthy, light, that was the idea, but the mushroom sauce was lacking in just about everything. Hence no photo. But, I’m thinking if those courgettini were sitting in a rich tomato sauce, arrabbiata maybe, chilis, basil sort of thing, this might be a different thing. This weekend, I reckon.

Good Food

Pea and mint soup.

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It will be a very productive day in the kitchen. We just had this lovely soup for lunch, nothing was left, thoroughly enjoyable. The idea came from Tom Kerridge’s book, but I thickened it with 2 small potatoes, not split beans, as in the recipe. Also replaced the veggie stock with chicken stock and chucked in a small piece of chicken breast.

Started off with a large red onion, chopped and sauteed, 2 garlic cloves, minced, a carrot, for a bit of sweetness, 2 spuds. Stock, 20 minutes, till the veggies cooked, 400 g of frozen peas added, plus a handful of fresh mint from the garden. 5 minutes under the lid, then I blitzed it, added a bit of seasoning and a small piece of butter for silkiness, then just a garnish of parsley and single cream and it was ready to be enjoyed.

Cholla dough is proving, we’ll see what will come out of my first ever cholla, then in the evening we’ll be spiralizing courgettes for a new recipe. To be continued! 🙂

Good Food

Lockdown sushi.

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It’s been over 7 years since I left Dinings. Hard work it was, but satisfying and the food we served there was a Premier League. Never will I appreciate a supermarket sushi after what I was fortunate enough to taste and eat regularly back then.

Yesterday I sent a quick message to one of my former bosses, asking him how to make a proper fantastic sushi rice- in terms of flavouring. He was kind enough to send me a nice little formula for 250g of sushi rice, I used it as instructed and last night we had the best home made sushi to date. I flavoured the rice with 55g of rice vinegar, 35 g of caster sugar and 10g of salt, all dissolved and added to cooked and slightly cooled rice. When I tasted it I found it very sweet, but didn’t question Chief’s expertise and proceeded to roll my sushi. We had spicy tuna, as always, salmon avocado, salmon and asparagus, avo and cucumber for Izzie. That slightly sweet rice, when wrapped in nori and combined with the fish and extras was just something else. Both Florek and I were stunned. And we will be doing our rice like this from now onwards.

I also made a little starter with salmon sashimi and ponzu, ponzu however with yuzu juice, not lemon. Fresh, zingy, delicious!!!!