I love eating. Even more than I love cooking. My Mum got this thing into me, being a working woman with two kids and still managing to put a two course dinner on the table for us every day. My meals are a lot simpler, I cook for two, with Florian being my most devoted fan and audience. There is nothing more rewarding than a nicely turned out meal. There is nothing more enjoyable that a great plate of food in a decent restaurant with a glass of great red in a nice company. Hence this blog, to share ideas and joy of good food.
Bon Appetit.
When I asked Florek this morning what I should bake, he said -something lemony. So I flipped through mojewypieki.com, went to the garden to reduce the amount of rhubarb growing there and proceeded to make a cake. Such a good cake, in fact, that it deserves to be blogged and made again.
I creamed 120g of soft butter with 150 g of sugar and vanilla sugar, a zest of the whole lemon, 3 whole eggs, then slowly added 220 g of plain flour, 1,5 tsp of baking powder, 60 ml of lemon juice, combined it all quickly and got into a lined round tin. On top went about 250 g of fresh, chopped, unpeeled rhubarb and a handful of leftover blueberries. The cake baked in 170 degrees for about 45 minutes. Once baked and cooled I added a bit of lemon icing on top. Excellent with a good cup of tea. 🙂
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. 🙂
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.
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.
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.
March has been mega busy. And when I write this I have a massive grin on my face, as Things Are Happening and we are moving to Italy in summer.
The house is on the market, we’re trying to agree a good removal company to take all our stuff to Lucca, a new school for Izzie has been agreed, all sorts of logistics are being seen to, but yes- we are doing it! Later on this year we will be living full time in the land of the most amazing food ever.
I popped in to Co Op this lunch time to pick up some mozzarella and some cat food, but I came across the first asparagus of the season, early this year, due to a spell of fantastic weather for the last 2 weeks. I hope Italians have asparagus at least as good as the Brits here in the Cotswolds, to be discovered next spring.
I also made a batch of hazelnut macaroons, which I stuffed with the remaining coffee cream- remaining from a really good pannettone we had after Christmas. Hazelnuts and coffee, anytime!
Even more pancakes? Yes, these deserve to be mentioned here, as they really were delicious. I hardly had time to take some photos, they were disappearing so quickly! Raymond Blanc’s recipe, a definite keeper!
210 ml of milk, 3 large eggs whisked together, to this 90 g of strong white flour. 30 g of butter melted and taken to the point of beurre noisette. 15 g of sugar, I added vanilla sugar. Zest of some lemon and orange- a revelation, it all smelled amazing when on the pan. Pinch of salt. All this well whisked together and left in the fridge to rest for over an hour. This amount of batter made about 7 pancakes, we had them with whatever we liked- plum conserve, hazelnut cream, lemon juice. Will be made again, most likely as soon as this weekend. 🙂
Recipe from souschef.com. I’ve made 4 of these for lunch today and I was very pleased that a certain child, a big fan of pancakes had all of hers and did not complain too much, she did however mention that next pancakes are to be NORMAL.
For 4 pancakes I made a batter out of 100 g of plain flour, 15 g of icing sugar ( recipe asked for 25, but I’m doing really well on cutting down my sugar use altogether), 1 tbsp of matcha, 1 whole egg, 250 ml of milk, all of this well combined. I fried them on a tiny amount of oil, which made them nice and light, served with blackcurrant jam. Nice little recipe!
Today marked 21 days of my commitment to Choda’s daily workouts. 3 weeks. Every day. Without any massive whinging or having to force myself. I do 20 minutes a day on the mat, today I wiped the dust off the “Scalpel” dvd and did 45 minutes. It felt really good. I thought that I’d love to reward myself with a bowl of steamed mussels, but I didn’t. The budget is normally close to zero on a Sunday, moules mariniere are made with cream, which I have not had for over a month ( a very loud applause!!!!) and finally, the weather really sucks these days, gales, rain and general shit outside of the window, not a day to get dressed and go out eating. Instead I’ve made us some delicious, light lunch, which we both enjoyed a lot, but I’m sure we’ll be hungry in about 2 hours- too bad, the fat will not go by itself.
I ordered some lovely Italian cured meats from Camisa again last week, mortadella is long gone with Izzie’s enthusiastic help, parma ham was enjoyed yesterday for lunch, today I used the remaining 3 slices, two kinds of salami still waiting to be opened. I made croutons out of my remaining halloumi bread, very flavoursome, when pan fried. Rocket, olives, cherry tomatoes, avo, feta, sweetcorn, that parma, croutons and a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic. Simple, delicious, light.
One of the worst storms in decades is enjoying itself all over British Isles this weekend, the schools were closed today and people were generally advised to stay at home. I hate this sort of weather, but I made the most of it by baking before lunch, good timing too, as after lunch there was a massive power cut that lasted until 7pm. I managed to bake some delicious bread though, which we had for lunch, against our dietary recommendations. 🙂
Recipe was from Good Food mag, from Nadia Hussein, I purchased chipotle chili flakes from souschef.co.uk especially for this loaf and also some halloumi cheese, with which I was pleasantly surprised. I used 500 g of strong bread flour and did 2 small loaves, as Izzie is not a major chili fan just yet. 7 g of dry yeast, a tsp each of salt and caster sugar, 25 g of very soft butter, kitchen aid did the work and it proved for 2 hours, while lots of little chores got done, including a work out.
Once more than doubled in size I divided the dough in two, added 125 g of grated halloumi to both and chili flakes to one, dried oregano to the other. Formed to sexy loaves and left to prove again for over an hour. Once ready, I baked them in 220 degrees for a bit more than 20 minutes. The loaf with chili is sensational, I wish I could eat more bread, but still counting calories these days.
The dinner this evening was cooked in semi darkness, with the help of a torch and two small candles.
I made us a risotto from bediet’s list, which turned out really nicely, even Izzie had a bowl. I made it my way, of course, not bediet’s way, featuring tomato paste as a main ingredient- my base was made of chopped shallot, courgette, a generous handful of skinned cherry tomatoes, all nicely cooked down and then 150 g of arborio in. No white wine this time, only chicken stock. Cooked till I was pleased with the texture, then finished off with a little butter and some parmesan- which never gets a mention in bediet’s recipe suggestions, I can’t do a good risotto without it. Also on top a few pieces of torn buffalo mozzarella ( allowed) and some fresh basil. Really, really nice.
