10 out of  10, slash triumph! 🙂

I’m really pleased with it. The recipe from the recent GF with lots of my personal touches. First, the chicken bollocks. I pulsed some chicken thigh meat in my tiny blender inherited from Colin, grated a carrot and chopped a large shallot. Seasoned it well, salt, pepper, soy sauce, good splash of sesame oil and baked in the hot oven for about 20 minutes on the baking parchment. Then I made teriyaki. I. MADE. TERIYAKI. From scratch. By myself. And it’s absolutely fucking lovely!!!!!

What GF was suggesting did not convince me, so I googled it and used my common sense plus what I know from Ubon and Dinings, what it should look like, what it should taste like. I threw 5 tbsp of brown sugar onto the pan, 1/2 tsp of ground ginger, 1/4 cup of soy sauce, 1/2 cup of water, 2 tbsp of honey and warmed it up slowly, it had the wrong, muddy colour and was not thickening. I added a generous tbsp of corn flour mixed with 1/2 cup of water and after a good 10 minutes of  patient stirring I had a triumph. It was so good, that I poured myself a glass of martini to toast it, while chatting online with Agata.

I served with basmati rice, seasoned well and with lots of fresh coriander and some steamed pak choi, which I nearly forgot about….

Yeah. I’m a talent.:-)

This evening Oluta made quiche. Nothing amazing about it, apart from the fact that there was no shortcrust pastry at Waitrose. I wasn’t bothered, I did a quick research and opted out for Fucking Gordon’s recipe. And it was fantastic. 200 g of plain flour, 100 g of butter, 100ml of water is all it takes. I blitzed flour with cold butter until the texture was breadcrumbs-like, then added the water and worked it into a lovely pastry within a couple of minutes. It was then left in the fridge to rest. Afterwards, the usual story, blind baked, then filled with some red onion chutney on the bottom, fried pancetta with leeks and some peas, topped with a runny mixture of double cream, 2 eggs, grated cheese, nicely seasoned featuring nutmeg in large amount. And baked for about 25 minutes. It was a brilliant quiche, served with a green salad.

Next time I’ll buy shortcrust pastry, I’ll give myself a smack right afterwards.

First thought this morning when I woke up- Sunday at work, tick. Done. I convinced Florian to stay at home this morning as well and decided to make the one recipe from the most recent GF magazine, that really caught my attention. I did. The state of the kitchen says it all.

For banana pancakes I used 140 g of self raising flour, a tsp of baking powder, 3 tbsps of brown sugar, 120m l of milk, 25 g of melted butter, 2 eggs and a large mashed banana. The recipe recommends frying them on butter, I did  it with first 3, then switched to olive oil, as butter burns quickly. I grilled some bacon in the meantime, the nice, thin, American style bacon, that I can only get in Sainsbury’s, made us coffee and was ready to serve. With some maple syrup for a glossy finish.

I was hoping to make it look as good as some of the Masterchef stuff, it didn’t go THAT well, but it was a lovely, tasty dinner. I’d really like all the mess in the kitchen to clean itself now, but somehow doubt it will happen.

First, I roasted off some lovely winter veggies in the oven, I used a parsnip, some butternut squash, a beetroot and a few shallots, which I finished off with some truffle oil. It made a lovely side dish. Boneless chicken thighs I flattened and stuffed with chopped, cooked porcini mushrooms, rolled, seasoned and placed in the pot with my lovely sauce in the making. The sauce I made by frying some chopped shallots, adding mushroom stock and chicken stock cube. When the chicken cooked through, I finished the sauce by thickening it with some flour and cream, seasoned well and topped with fresh thyme. Served with creamy mustard mash.

Random thing I made this evening, I came across the recipe somewhere, but had to Olutafy it a bit, as the original called for bacon, raclette cheese and so on. I thought, no bacon is better for this dish than pancetta, instead of onion, leeks will do a much better job flavour wise, and as for the cheese, I think raclette belongs with raclette, I used Gruyere.

I peeled and chopped the spuds into small chunks, quick boiled them for about 5 minutes, then mixed with fried pancetta lardons and fried leeks, some double cream, a splash of Chablis, grated Gruyere and seasoned all to taste nicely. I baked it for about 30 mins under the foil, then removed it to crisp the top up a touch. Worked a treat. It wouldn’t be amazing on its own, so I made a nice green bean salad to go with it, but it would make  an evil side dish, I think. To a roast, for instance.