Picking Blueberries

Hey

For dessert this week I tried out another new recipe. It was a French blueberry dessert. It was very simple. Cream together the sugar and butter, then add in the remaining ingredients for the batter - cream, flour egg and cinnamon. This is then poured into your dish over the blueberries.

It's then supposed to bake in the oven for 30 minutes. I left mind in longer, partly because it was slightly quite liquid in the middle when inserting a skewer. It was still slightly runny when I did eventually take it out of the oven. Me and my mum came to the conclusion that it was meant to perhaps be like a soufflé. Would love to know what it's meant to be like.

xxx

Blackberry

Hey

I finally tried a recipe from my new Rachel Khoo cook book - My Little French Kitchen. I had the day off, so I went down to the butchers to get the meat for the recipe. They only had pork ribs so pork ribs is what I went with.

I picked to cook sticky cassis ribs with couscous. The recipe in the book is for mint and broad bean couscous but I'm not a fan of the broad bean so I changed it slightly and made mint and pea couscous instead.

The ribs needed to marinate so that was the first task after getting back from the butchers. For the marinade you combine the crème de cassis, blackberry jam, runny honey, pepper, salt and lemon zest. Once this is whisked together coat the ribs and add the roughly chopped lemon and leave for anything from 1 hour to overnight (I left mine for 4 hours). Once you have left the ribs for as long as you like, turn them into a large cooking dish, cover with foil and cook for 2 hours on 150C.

After the 2 hours, uncover the ribs, turn the oven up to 200C and cook for a further 30 minutes. Drain off the sauce and reduce it down in a saucepan. I returned my ribs to the oven to crisp up further, although the recipe says to just cover to keep them warm. As the sauce is meant to reduce for 10 minutes, this is the perfect time to get the couscous going as you need to leave it for 10 minutes. Measure out the couscous and put it into dish. The mint stalks, peas are boiled in the water, and once boiled add to the couscous, cover and leave for 10 minutes. 

Once the couscous is ready, remove the mint stalks, stir through the chopped mint leaves and fluff up with a fork and serve along with the ribs.

I need to practising reducing sauces as mine didn't thicken that much. The crème de cassis is amazing on the ribs. This dish would definitely work well as a sharing dish for a dinner party.

xxx

Le Festin

Hey

Continuing with trying to increase my cooking repertoire, I tried Beef Bourguinon. I had always thought that it was a complicated dish so only ordered it when eating out. I was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was. Yes it takes a long time (3 hours of cooking once it is all together), apart from that it's not too bad.

• First fry off the bacon in a high based casserole, then removed with a slotted spoon.
• Then seal the cubed beef in batches, again remove with a slotted spoon.
• Add the chopped carrot and onions and soft them for 5 minutes, then add the crushed garlic and fry for a further minute.
• Return all the meat to the casserole, then add the flour and cook for a minute whilst stirring (this will help thicken the sauce.
• Add the wine, stock and bouquet garni.
• Bring to the boil then simmer for 3 hours.
• When the cooking time is almost done, fry some mushrooms in butter.

You are meant to strain off the sauce and then reduce it before recovering the dish, but I was lazy and skipped this step.

My recipe suggests serving with mash potatoes which I did do for my sister but I prefer rice so the rest of us got rice. Yes I need to work on presentation (would probably have been helped by reducing the sauce) but it is definitely a dish for cold January evenings.

xxx

My favourite Things

Hey

Some glittery accessories while playing
photographer for sister 

Some welcome relief for my hands after the alcohol gels
at work 

Newly purchased Bake Off themed thank you cards

xxx

In Bakewell

Hey

One of the many recipe books I got for Christmas was John Whaite Bakes from one of my friends.

I picked a simple recipe from it to start with - Bakewell Muffins. It is almost an one bowl mix. First you mix the dry ingredients with the cherries in a bowl. Then you mix the melted butter, milk and almond essence in a jug before combining the 2 mixtures.

Quite a  runny mixture is formed, which can be messy to spoon into muffin cases. I need to find a cupcake scoop as I believe it will be very helpful especially with runny mixtures. The recipe tells you to divide the mixture between the cases which means that they are filled pretty much to the top. I was slightly concerned that it would result in mushroom muffins (where the top ends up wider than the base due to overfilling). 

The muffins bake for 20-25 minutes and I was pleasantly surprised that they turned out perfectly. No wide tops.

The classic flavour of the bakewell is captured in these muffins and they are great for tea time treats, lunch box fillers or for breakfast.

xxx

What's Your Favourite Flavour?

Hey

My final Christmas arrived this week - my free KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment! My KitchenAid was my graduation present but we waited until there was a good deal on them and before Christmas there was money off and "while stocks last" voucher to claim a free ice cream maker. 

The ice cream maker was definitely top of the list in regards of which attachments I wanted to get first, so I was very happy when I saw the offer. I can finally try making ice cream! I'm also interested in trying making ice cream with soya/almond milk due to my dairy intolerance. It also means I can finally crack the spine of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream book I received years ago. Cookie Dough will be more than likely the first one I try. 

What's your favourite flavour?

xxx

Buche de Noel

Hey

To kick start my resolutions, I made a Buche de Noel to celebrate the new year. Although I like to bake the traditional Christmas food - mince pies, Christmas pudding and cake - I not a big fan of heavy fruit cakes and food, so being able to try new recipes that are just as festival seems like a good idea for the new year so that I have a large selection come next Christmas. Also the fact that its a French classic helps as well.

I used a recipe that I found in a magazine but Rachel Khoo - who I have both of her cook books now thanks to my mum at Christmas - also has a link to her recipe from her Evening Standard Column on her blog.

It's surprising how very few ingredients can create so a lovely dessert. The sponge it self is just eggs, sugar, chocolate and cocoa powder. Mine didn't turn look great once it was baked - not that I knew what it should look like - but buttercream can cover a multitude of mistakes.

Due to the fact I have an intolerance to diary, I didn't use cream for the filling, I used buttercream, but still folded through the raspberries. I had raspberries that had been frozen and then thawed. This added a lot of moisture to the buttercream so the filling was a bit runny but it seemed OK once I popped it into the freeze for a short time to firm up. Definitely in lovely with the buttercream using melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder - how have I never tried it like this before. I will definitely be trying this buttercream on cupcakes.


Presentation wise it needs work but it will definitely be a recipe I will be trying again and perfecting. I'm tempted to give a mint version a go, potentially with crushed candy canes folded through the filling (yes I still have lots of candy canes left from Christmas).

xxx

New Year's Resolution

Hey

The end of last year was quite busy with starting my job, getting ready for Christmas and getting my head around a few things so I did disappear for a bit but I'm back .

I haven't really made new year resolutions since I was little when it was always the same - to stop biting my nails. I have got a couple that I would like to achieve this year - the third one is going to be the hardest as I first need to construct a list and then figure out how I can do them.

1. To try out a new recipe each week. I got 5 new recipe books for Christmas this year and I am forever collecting recipes from magazines that I don't always have time to try, so this year I want to try something new each week sweet or savoury. That way I might actually get to put some recipes into my recipe book I got for Christmas a couple of years ago.

2. To learn French. I wouldn't say that I necessarily enjoyed my language lessons at school, but I always wanted to learn French - I love Paris and you never know when a language would come in useful. I liked the reading and writing part of it at school but not really the speaking part as I always worried that my pronunciation wasn't corrected.

3. To do something each month that scares me. I know very vague and I haven't even consider what these 12 things will be so this may be a work in progress and may not be achieved each month but this out of all of them is one to take forward year on year to push myself and make me grow.

So here are my goals for the year, good luck with any that you have planned and hope you all have a brilliant 2014.

xxx