We’re off to dine in Roka Charlotte St in 2 months time with Steve and Christina, I can’t wait. Had a good look at their menu and I think I’ll go for their set menu at £90, which might just take me to food heaven by the look of it! One of the several dishes on that menu are scallop skewers with wasabi mayo. I had some frozen scallops, so last night was the time to see what kind of combination it is. Obviously that was me executing it, a certain Masaki Sugisaki was contacted in order not to cock things up. Mayo and wasabi mixed did not taste particularly exciting, Masaki suggested either salt or soy sauce, I added a bit of both and ended up with lovely creamy finish to my simply panfried scallops. As it was an evening meal , I made some panfried potatoes with chorizo, shallot and lots of spring onions too. A glass of Gruner Veltliner completed the picture. 🙂
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Mango and peach charlotte.
I needed a cake for a double birthday I threw yesterday for Mariusz (46) and Ewa (43). I chose the charlottle from mojewypieki.com just by looking at it, never made one before, never tasted it. It was fun to make, not too complicated, but I still changed a few things, having read the reviews.
I baked my usual sponge with 2 eggs, sliced it in half horizontally and then started building the cake with the tiramisu kind biscuits, having to “shave” the last one to fit it in perfectly, sponge nr 1 neatly on the bottom. And still a little bit of the mango mousse escaped, but nothing that couldn’t be tidied up.
For the mango layer I used a small can of mango puree, the 450 g one, roughly 270 ml of double cream and 4,5 gelatine leaves. I skipped the orange juice and zest, but next time I’ll use less cream, it wasn’t mango enough for me. On top of it went the sponge number 2. To the fridge to set for an hour. On that some whipped cream and mascarpone,lightly sweetened, half and half, to which I added a few tbsps of the orange jelly that was waiting to go on top. On the creamy layer I arranged some thinly sliced canned peaches, a few bits of cherries in kirsch ( pomegranate seeds would have been better but I didn’t fancy buying the whole fruit to use a few seeds), then jelly and the whole thing rested in the fridge overnight.
It came out of the tin without any problems, a ribbon was added for extra touch too.
My only complaint would be that the biscuits did not soak up any of the filling and were quite dry, Macy enjoyed then, while we ate the inside. 🙂
Maple and hazelnut shortbread.
So many things have been cooked and baked for the last 2 months, but not many deserved to be blogged about, these cookies though have to be here, the smell in the kitchen is intoxicating!
I’ve been looking for a recipe for maple cookies that would at least resemble those that Florek brought from Canada a couple of times. Last week I pulled some recipe from the web and made half a portion, they were mediocre and turned hard within a few hours, most ended up in the bin. So I thought I’d try my regular shortbread recipe, add a splash of maple syrup and a handful of nuts and see what happens. For about 25 small round cookies I used 110 g of plain flour, 90 g of soft butter, 40 g of sugar- less than normally, as maple syrup followed, 50 ml of it, as well as 50 g of chopped hazelnuts. Rolled into a handsome sausage with cling film and chilled for over an hour and then sliced and baked in 180 degrees for about 13 minutes.
These hardened as well as the other ones last week, but they taste of roasted nuts, butter and maple syrup. Good, but the recipe hunt for awesome maple cookies is not over.
A tasty run up to Christmas.
We’ve visited 2 local pubs recently, where food disappointed us on both occasions. Hollow Bottom used to be our favourite place to eat not so long ago, now we were told “they’ve changed everything”, so no more San Miguel on tap, for instance, but the food was the real issue. I’ve eaten braised red cabbage there 2 years ago that blew me away. This time it did too- in a bad way. I could only taste one thing- vinegar.
And just a week ago we went for a Sunday roast to The Slaughters Inn. More expensive place, higher expectations. As mediocre as it gets, it turned out and cabbage- sour with vinegar. Very annoying, I can’t imagine how can someone call himself a chef, put a piece of turd like this on a plate, send it off and expect people to happily pay.
My Christmas menu is almost ready and there will be braised red cabbage on it. Today I’ve made it according to a recipe I found in Good Food, one of the old special festive editions. As it sat in the oven, two duck legs on the stove, the house filled up with fabulous smell. Great recipe, did the veg the justice it deserves;
Shredded cabbage, quite finely, plus a large red onion fried on butter till soft. In. 200 ml of port. A juice and a zest of 1 orange. Some cinnamon. 2 tbsps of brown sugar. A generous handful of chopped prunes. To the oven, covered, for nearly 2 hours in 140 degrees. Half way through the cooking everything gets a good stir and back in for the second half.
Once it cooled a little and I had a proper taste I decided it was a treat. Buttery, quite sweet, orange comes through nicely. Saved some for the ox cheeks I’ll be making for Steve and Christina this weekend. Thumbs up.
Duck legs with phenomenal sauce.
Saturday evening is my favourite day to cook. The Child is having a bath with Daddy, I can take my time, open a bottle of wine and get creative. My duck legs today were one of the best yet, the sauce I’ve managed to produce though- outstanding. It was the kind of sauce I was licking off the spoon thinking- fuck yeah. 🙂 And also, as Christmas this year will be at ours, with Mum, Mariusz, Julia and Ron arriving, the plan was to roast a whole duck. But those legs today made me think that maybe doing it the way I did today, 4 legs ( the Banks men don’t do duck!!!!) instead of the whole bird might be a better idea. All the recipes I looked at hint at the risk of legs being tough while breasts succulent, if one screws up the timing. This meal today made me wonder and most likely it will just be 4 perfect, stress free legs.
So, the best idea is to season the meat generously a couple of hours in advance, get that salt working, pepper too and some herb pepper and cumin too. Brown the meat nicely, transfer to a saucepan, while in the duck fat quickly sweat some shallots, leeks, carrots and garlic. A handful of dried porcini mushrooms. And add to the legs. A glass of red wine in, mine today was one of my absolute favourites, Catena’s Malbec. Then chicken stock, a couple of bay leaves, lid on and roughly 1,5 hour, till the meat is lovely and tender.
I took the meat out and blitzed all the sauce ingredients into a thick, velvety, luxury gravy, that hardly needed any seasoning. Maybe just a little butter and a sprinkle of pepper. I was really proud of myself. Duck is rapidly becoming my favourite meat. On the picture it might not look the part, but I finished the sauce with a teaspoon. That good!
Chicken chow mein.
I’m so doing it again!!
I fancied noodles last night. Ken Hom was in Saturday Kitchen recently, making some chicken and telling the viewers that back in his restaurant days the Chinese chefs would serve chicken breast to the Europeans and the thighs to the Chinese customers. Well, for me it is always a thigh, unless I’m making chicken kievs. So much more flavour in a thigh! So it was only natural to go with Ken’s recipe. The putrid shrimp paste has not made appearance in my pantry since that awful prawn dish, but that was a one off, there’s no doubt this boy knows his Chinese.
2 chopped boneless thighs sat in the marinade made of 2 tsps of soy sauce, same amount of Shaoxing rice wine, 1 tsp of sesame oil, 1/2 tsp of salt, quite a lot, and the same of white pepper.
Noodles cooked and drained sat drizzled with sesame oil, while I quickly stir fried the chicken, then removed it and threw 3 minced garlic cloves into the wok. Quite a lot of lovely, crunchy mange tout, chopped spring onion, noodles into that. Then a nice little sauce- exact same ingredients like for the marinade, plus a tsp of sugar and some extra sesame oil, just because I adore it. Chicken back in, a good toss of the wok and that was that.
The white pepper that I hardly ever use in my cooking was a revelation here. As was the rice wine. This is getting done again fairly soon!
Cinnamon & apple macaroons.
I saw these on tv, no recipe, but the idea appealed to me straight away. I love cinnamon, so I had to try. Made the macaroons usual way, minus the artificial colouring, but nearly 2,5 tsps of cinnamon went in. I kept on adding until I was satisfied and still managed not to overdo it. The filling took a bramley apple and one pink lady cooked down to a pulp with some vanilla sugar, mixed with 2 gelatine leaves, then cooled. I wanted the filling to keep its shape and it did quite well, without having a jelly consistency.
The result is a bit like a crunchy apple pie, lovely, warming from the spice, crunchy from the meringue. Good one!
Stuffed crust pizza.
I made it slightly different last night, inspired by a photo of a pizza in Florence I saw on the internet, with Ponte Vecchio in the background. It made me squeak that it’s only early October and we’re not going to Italy for months, but my pizza this evening was one of the best. The stuffed crust had nothing to do with it, though, maybe just the looks?!
I made it all the usual way, but wrapped up some mozzarella in the edges. What it needed instead was a stronger cheese, medium cheddar maybe, but the mild, modest mozzarella got lost and could hardly be tasted. So I just spread the tomato sauce, chopped mozzarella on top, parmesan and I baked it so plain. Once out of the oven, prosciutto di San Danielle went on, a touch ( ok, a bit more than a touch) of truffle salsa and a drizzle of truffle sauce. For me – food heaven. Florek said I’ve overdone truffle flavour, but CAN YOU ACTUALLY OVERDO TRUFFLE FLAVOUR?????…..
Vanilla panna cotta with strawberry compote to finish with. Simple, sweet, indulgent. 
Cauliflower soup with chorizo crust.
Cauliflower used to be my food hell when I was a child. I remember my Mum having to mash it into tiniest pieces not to be spotted on the surface of the soup, otherwise I would not go anywhere near it. Cooked pieces of cauliflower as a side dish made me sick just looking at it. But that was a long time ago. Now I am a huge fan of cauli. Particularly love it as a side to meats, feed lots of it to my family and this lunch time gave them a soup, the recipe from latest Good Food.
A shallot fried on olive oil, small cauli cut in florets in, 3 small spuds,chicken stock, lid on and it cooked for about 12-15 minutes. In the meantime I chopped some chorizo and some sourdough and quickly panfried it with a little bit of garlic.
When the cauliflower was nice and soft, I blitzed it all into a creamy goodness, improved the greyish colour with a splash of double cream, seasoned generously, added some chopped parsley and that was that. Izzie scoffed down a bowl of it minus chorizo, we enjoyed the whole lot. Yum.
Vanilla gallore.
Ron, my dad in law recently vacationed on the island of Reunion, where vanilla is grown and produced. He bought 2 packages for me and sent them over.
I’ve tested the lovely, moist pod first in a panna cotta, fantastic flavour and then this evening in a custard, that accompanied apple and plum crumble. We had a lovely lunch in Brasserie Blanc earlier on, so we didn’t feel like dinner, but my crumble suggestion was received enthusiastically.
I haven’t really measured ingredients for a custard in a long time, I just take 2 egg yolks and whip them with sugar, maybe 3-4 tbsps, but I do add a tsp of corn starch to be sure the consistency is good. Milk gets heated up with that scraped out vanilla pod, then slowly added to the eggs, whisking all the time, returned to the heat and gently stirred till thickened. Very good custard. Very good crumble. Creme brulee next.