Monthly Archives: April 2022

Baking

Puff pastry from scratch.

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I fancied something a bit more special yesterday, something maybe a bit more challenging. I saw these little beauties on mojewypieki.com and decided to have a go, although I knew that whatever I’d make would be ready to eat the next day.

I’ve made half a portion from that recipe – the idea of using 500g of butter made me put up 3kg just thinking about it! I ended up with about 11 pastries. So, yesterday I measured out 100ml of cold water, to which I added 7g of salt and dissolved it. 200 g of plain flour, 35 g of melted butter plus that salty water was made into a quick dough, while the remaining butter of 250g piece I had, softened and rolled out into a neat square, wrapped in cling film and chilled in the fridge for 2 hours alongside the dough. Then the dough came out, rolled out onto a square twice as big as the butter one, butter went on top and I folded the pastry on top of it to make it look like an envelope. Rolled it out away from me to make it into a rectangle, folded three ways and into the fridge it went for 1,5 hour. I repeated this process 4 times yesterday, this morning once more and I was ready to use my French pastry ( puff in England, French in Poland we call it).

Today I made a filling of finely chopped apple, some raisin and cranberries, cinnamon, vanilla sugar, lemon juice and a dusting of plain flour. Rolled out my pastry, cut into squares, filled with apples, a little brushing of egg white on the edges- and some of them still opened!-closed with a help of a fork, more egg white, 3 little slashes on top of each pastry so that steam could escape and into the oven for 20 minutes in 200-220 degrees.

Once out and still very warm I applied a bit of glaze and that was that.

What I’ve learned is that French pastry is not difficult to make, it’s time consuming, but it is definitely worth every single fold and chill it took. The pastry is flaky, buttery, light and flavoursome, filling not too sweet, and excellent little treat to go with a cup of tea. I had 2 and left the kitchen before snatching another one. Will wait at least until the afternoon. 🙂

Eaten out

Dinings SW3.

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Epic.

I could stop here, add the photos and be done, but I can’t, as last weekend we have had the best meal of our lives. Hands down. Steve and Christina, our foodie, well travelled friends were also blown away and agreed that we will be talking about this meal for years to come.

It was Florek’s 42nd birthday on Saturday. About 3 months ago I decided that I’ll burn some of my savings and we’ll go to Dinings for a birthday treat. What I didn’t anticipate was Masaki, my former boss, would treat us like royalty, give a table for as long as we wanted and serve his most amazing food to us. We were all lost for words, it was that good.

Everything that arrived at the table was looking stunning and was served in generous amount for 4 people, we didn’t have to be slicing things and sharing pieces of sashimi and such. We started with Dinings legendary tartar chips, some with wagyu, some with tuna, some with scallops. Some wonderful sashimi, where scallop stood out for me, might have been the best scallop ever( hand dived, Cornish). Then dover sole sashimi with sooooo much truffles we started to chuckle. Amazing.

Then the mini burger buns, I don’t think they lasted on the table beyond 3 minutes, ours were extra special with grilled wagyu and foie gras mousse, but the lobster and caviar ones were not too shabby either. Outstanding.

There was grilled aubergine, there was dover sole with morelle mushrooms, my first ever taste of those, I am now a fan!

There was a beautifully presented crab dish, where Cornish crab was mixed with freshly made noodles, none of us ever had anything like that before.

Then, as I was approaching the limit of comfortable food amount, grilled wagyu with pepper sauce came to the table, followed by sushi and sushi rolls. I switched from sake to green tea at that point, it helped with digestion. 🙂

Finally, desserts arrived. A lovely, light chocolate mousse cake for Florek, a yuzu cheesecake shaped like yuzu, light and wonderful, some petit fours. An icing on the cake.

We finished with some negroni at the bar with The Chief, for which I was not allowed to pay. Speechless, 12 out 10, that’s how good it was.

Baking

Lemon pound cake.

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This is not the most brilliant photo of the cake, I admit, but I’m lucky I managed to snap it before the remaining cake was eaten. I came across the recipe on youtube, of all places, copied it quickly and ended up with a surprisingly lovely, moist and lemony cake. I had some nice Italian lemons – amazing what you can sometimes find in Lidl, I thought it would be a good practise before having beautiful lemons much more easily available later this year!

So I started with 180 g of caster sugar, into which I rubbed 2 heaped tsps of lemon zest, then 110 g of soft butter, KA took over here. 2 tbsps of veg oil. 2 whole eggs, one by one. 30 ml of lemon juice. 187 g of plain flour, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1/2 tsp of salt, all dry ingredients gently folded in, then 120 ml of milk, combined, not overmixed.

Loaf tin was waiting ready lined with paper, the cake baked for about 45 minutes in 160 degrees, till the baking stick came out clean.

Once slightly cooled it was glazed, 50 g of icing sugar and 30 ml of lemon juice, plus a little grated zest on top. Delicious, the next day even more so.

Eaten out

Greek on the Docks.

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Liz and Ian recommended this place to us a while ago. We finally went last Thursday, escaping the first batch of viewings in our house, today we went there again, this time for lunch, with the said Liz and Ian and the girls.

What an excellent find this place is! It sits in Gloucester docks, overlooking the water. The service is excellent, a few older Greek chaps, who know what they talk about, but also don’t take any crap from anyone. Lovely, exciting menu. Lots of seafood, lots of meat, lots of veggies. Great desserts. Even music on Thursday was pleasant, none of this awful loud shite like in Jamie Oliver’s places.

So on Thursday we went with the chap’s recommendations; Izzie had a lovely kofta with fries and salad, chargrilled, which she scoffed down in minutes. Paul went for souvlaki made with pork tenderloin- and he is not big on pork! I had lamb chops with roasted potatoes, potatoes being the only thing I did not enjoy- they were roasted with lots of lemon.

Lovely pita bread on the side too.

We had to have the baklava, which we did, very good too, not drowned in rose water, which normally puts me off.

Today for lunch we didn’t exactly hold back. We had starters, while the girls munched on their koftas and fries. Liz had calamari, Paul grilled haloumi, scallops for me and grilled octopus for Ian- I’ll be having that next time, it was fantastic, sitting on some chickpea puree thing.

Liz’s Greek salad looked the part and tasted the part, it came with our mains of lamb chops again, souvlaki again, grilled prawns/swordfish.

And then some desserts. There was semifreddo with almonds and pistachios, we all enjoyed it, some mousse thing, a touch too sweet which we have not finished and a baklava again.

We ate really well. Will certainly be going back for more.