I hardly ever have time to cook, bake and blog these days, such is the down side to having a cool job again. This afternoon though I thought I must make something nice and sweet. So I did. A krówka cake. There will be no recipe here today, as this is the cake made of half ready products, that Jana sent me once, knowing Florian’s affection for toffee.
So I made it and it’s lovely. Half of it will be taken to work tomorrow.
Sounds posher than it looks?… 🙂
Another one from the latest Good Food. The original recipe calls for goats cheese, which I’m not a massive fan of, but might actually give it a chance next time. The idea is awesome, but if the cheese was more flavoursome than the ricotta I used tonight, might be even better.
I blind baked the base of shortcrust pastry, which had an X-tra factor of some grated parmesan rolled into it. It made the kitchen smell lovely when it baked, as well as added crunch and flavour to the base. When baked, I spread some nice spicy onion chutney on the bottom and left it await the filling. The base of it is basically a nice thick bechamel, to which I added a tub of ricotta- nice and light but it lacked some chemistry I thought- a good handful of parmesan, some fresh chopped thyme leaves, some grated cheddar – no enough- and seasoned with nutmeg and pepper. Then in went 2 egg yolks, followed by 2 whipped egg whites. All mixed nicely, into the base, some parmesan and thyme on top and into the oven for 35 minutes in 200 degrees until nicely risen and brownish. Only after it baked I trimmed off the edges of the pastry.
I served it with a green salad with pancetta lardons and cherry tomatoes and the last bottle of Iona sauvignon blanc. It was nice and light. Loved the chutney’s contribution to the dish, but will experiment with different cheese next time.
I saw these in the latest edition of Good Food and wanted to make them straight away. They reminded me of the little pistacchio financiers Gabby use to make in Ubon. She even gave me the recipe, but it included some mega posh pistacchio paste that could be obtained from confectioner’s shops, preferably in France, so I never made them. This recipe calls for no such nonsense, it’s nice and simple and the effect is nearly as good as Gabby’s. Hers were finer. 🙂
I melted 200 g of butter and let it cool slightly. The pistacchios were whizzed until fine, mixed with 85 g of ground almonds, same amount of plain flour and 200 g of icing sugar. I then added the melted butter and 5 egg whites that were slightly frothed with a fork. All nicely mixed together went into the piping bag – what a convenient and mess saving invention- and then into the silicone form especially obtained from TK Maxx for this purpose. I sprinkled the top with a bit of roughly chopped pistacchios as well, looks nice. They baked in 200 degrees for around 25 minutes each batch. I made about 30, we’re half way through them and I’m glad they’re quite filling, cause I want to take a few to work tomorrow.
They’re lovely, soft in the middle and ever so slightly crunchy on top. Will definitely be made again!
Mum is visiting, due to her birthday treat dinner in Dinings. In fact, Mum should be at home at the moment, if certain person hadn’t screwed up her return plane tickets. Certain person did, however , so certain person had to buy two return tickets last night and 200 quid later she could get over it. This afternoon, to make life sweeter, we made karpatka.
The two pastry bases needed to make it are similar to the classic choux pastry. Mum used a glass of water that she boiled and melted half a margarine in it, took it off the heat and added a glass of plain flour mixing vigorously. After it all cools down a bit, 5 eggs are added, one after another, all worked in before the next one is added. The pastry is to be nice, smooth and shiny. A teaspoon of baking powder and the pastry is ready to be divided in two and baked for about 50 minutes each in 180 Celsius, if still moist inside, needs to go back in to dry out.
The filling is made by cooking budyn, a Polish simple powdered dessert similar to custard, made with milk. For our filling I prepared budyn according to the instructions on the packet PLUS a table spoon of plain flour, it has to be quite thick. When cooled, I blitzed it with half a margarine and some vanilla sugar.
The cake is finished off with a generous amount of icing sugar.
One of the most awesome dishes from work, seabass carpaccio with ponzu, truffle salsa and fresh summer truffles. So good, we gladly give the customers spoons to finish off the sauce.
Yum.
That was the first recipe I saw in the new Good Food and planned on making it last week, but ran out of steam on Wednesday afternoon. Today though, having cleaned the house, done the laundry, an enormous pile of ironing, cleaned up the garden and relaxed in it for half an hour with a glass of apple martini- there were no more excuses.
I started with the caramel, done it for the first time ever using an actual recipe, rather than chucking lots of sugar into the pan and hoping for it to work. 70 g of sugar plus 2tbsp of water got nicely melted on the pan and some bubbling and colour- changing later I had some lovely caramel, that I poured onto 4 ramekins and got to the custard.
I used 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk plus 50 g of sugar that got beaten up until nice and light and then I gradually poured 250 ml of hot milk while beating still. It needed straining, after which I added some Cointreau for extra flavour and some vanilla paste and finally poured onto the ramekins with caramel. I baked it in bain marie for 20 minutes in 130 Celsius, then cooled and chilled in the fridge for 4 hours.
Very happy with the texture, will be more generous with Cointreau next time.
A couple of pictures from the food training session at work the other day.
Wagyu tataki, beef so tender it melts in the mouth, rare, chargrilled- which gives it slightly bitter, wonderful flavour on the edges. Served with ponzu sauce. Yuuuuum.
Chilli garlic shrimps, chargrilled again and marinated in chilli garlic paste, the coriander and sesame oil give the flavour another dimension. I couldn’t get enough!!!!
I felt like baking today, so I produced 4 little pastry cases ( recipe the same like in blueberry tartlets plus some ground almonds) , filled them with fresh custard, topped with strawberries and some jelly on top to keep them fresh and shiny. It was a lovely and light dessert, will put some more different berries next time. Nice.
Sunday’s all about good dinner. Must be home made, planned, tasty and worth putting on the blog. Today it was pasta again ( I’ve been wondering, if I had to choose what my last meal on earth would be, it’d be between Italian, some awesome stuffed pasta or Japanese, but I’m yet to try the wagyu beef nigiri with truffle salsa on top, so good thing I don’t need to decide just yet ).
It was supposed to be ravioli, but when Florek rolled out the pasta for me, my fingers somehow shaped it into tortelloni, for a change. The stuffing was very simple, just sauteed, finely chopped shitake and cup mushrooms with some onions and parsley on butter, seasoned with salt and white pepper. Boiled for about 3 minutes.
The white wine sauce was suggested by Nick, who always seems to have a selection of good ideas up his sleeve whenever we discuss food at work. What an excellent and simple sauce! 2 chopped shallots quickly panfried on butter with a handful of fresh thyme, 250 ml of white wine in ( we went to Majestic to stock up today, among other things we got 2 bottles of a lovely fruity Iona sauvignon blanc, it was a great and refreshing thing to have in the evening! now I regret we only got 2 of those), 200 ml of double cream added when the wine reduced a little, a touch of dijon mustard, some black pepper, lemon juice, strained and poured over pasta with some freshly grated parmesan. I loved the flavours. Really did. Could have had more!!! 🙂
