I'm back...Relaxed, Blond, and Breathing

It's been a while. A long long while.  Legitimate excuses in no particular order:

1. Surprise surgery. Thinking that I was destined to have the permanent nickname of 'snotty' (we should all have such wonderful friends, thanks KC) - at the end of March I realised that my permanent sinus infection / cold / allergies were actually the result of some not so nice 'stuff' in my sinuses and nose.  We'll leave it there...presumably you are reading this blog because you enjoy eating...not the drama of my nose growths.

2. My sense of smell, or lack thereof (see item 1 above).  Now typically I have a nose of a bloodhound - I can smell someone eating chocolate in the front of a plane when I'm sat in the back next to the stinky toilet.

I had no concept of how bad my non existent sense of smell was until three days after my surgery.  In the shower I had a "HOLY SH!T" moment. My unscented shampoo I'd been using for nearly 2 months - smelled like a tropical coconut explosion.  Who knew? Clearly this lack of smell made my cooking desire wane a bit as well.

3. Resignation. Right before I found out I had to have surgery I resigned (after nearly 7 years) with Accenture.  I had a month of happy days, however filled with wrapping up work, planning surgery, and entertaining visitors.

4. A travelling food coma.  Yes, that's right people - I've been in a coma - unable to write for the past month because I've literally been eating and eating my way across the northeastern US and southern california.  Who eats a cupcake every day as a 'snack'? Yes, that's right - I did. I kid you not, I think I ate close to 15 cupcakes in a 2 week period.  Add to that a number of delights such as the Fenway Frank (and corresponding Bud Lights) amongst numerous other 'treats'. I am only now starting to emerge.

During my month-long coma I managed to grow a massive food baby.  She goes everywhere with me at the moment.  I'm hoping some nice London R&R and gym time sorts her out.  I'm looking for someone to adopt.  Nothing personal - but she's not the cutest - and is really annoying my jeans at the moment.

So folks - With the new nose, sense of smell, and new job - I'll be back cooking and baking ASAP.  Today has me liaising with some puckery lemon bars and chicken with a rhubarb and cherry sauce.  Will be back in the next few days to let you know how they turn out. Hopefully I'll manage to lose the food baby.  Any takers?

Too busy baking to blog

Pre-proofed / pre-kneaded dough

Ah my baby's a beauty, isn't she?

You're thinking it so I'm going to say it,  yes - they are phallic looking.

Gooey lovely messy finished product 

I’ve fallen off of the blog bandwagon over the past few weeks.  Normally this is when I give some lame excuse about being “headless chicken busy” and travelling / working like a crazy woman.  While there’s been no travel, and only a moderately busy work schedule – there’s still been a fair bit of excitement...(stay tuned for updates).  


Ironically enough, a lot of the limited amount of free time I've had has been spent baking – but in a highly irregular way - creating loaves of bread, practicing eclair making, and baking copious scones.

One week alone I managed to make 5 loaves of bread – two lovely egg-y challahs (one coated in caraway, poppy and black onion seeds and the other with a wee bit of cinnamon and sugar). The other three loaves were an all-white “bloomer” bread, which was for my "confidential" audition (sorry folks, even signed the official waver). 


Regardless of the outcome of the audition, I learned that bread making is very much a science, much more than cake or pastry making.  Both challahas came out looking, smelling and tasting luverly.  However, the first 'bloomer' bread was cut into much too quickly.  It hadn't cooled properly so I thought it wasn't cooked all the way, so back into the oven it went only to then end up being overcooked.   Eh, they do say practice makes perfect though, the second and the third tries produced excellent results.


The third 'bloomer' was the one officially judged at my audition. It was weighed (apparently you can weigh the fat content of bread...god help if I ever get on one of those machines), was sniffed, poked, tasted and examined like a horse at auction. Official celebrity feedback? "Tasty, and great proofing."  Not too shabby for a novice.


My foray into choux pastry making was a slightly different experience.  I wasn't prepping for the audition, more just wanting to try something new and eclairs were a first for me. 


The thing is, I've always been a bit curious about eclairs - thinking they were quite difficult to make and not really worth the effort.  The eclair's dirty little secret? She's actually straightforward, simple, and a constant crowd pleaser.  Choux pastry can be made in the bat of an eye, pastry cream can be made 2-3 days ahead, and that chocolate glaze on top? Mine took about one minute in the microwave and about 1 minute out.  Not exactly rocket science eh?  Only now that the cat is out of the bag - I might be in serious trouble...instead of just grabbing for an apple I might just whip some up mid-week eclairs, just because I can.


The photos of the eclairs above aren't particularly pretty.  I started out by properly piping the pastry but since it was a random Tuesday night after work, and well...I didn't really give a fig what they looked like (nor did I imagine my eagerly awaiting co-workers would either) I went ahead and slapped the pastry cream in the middle and used a brush to slather on the chocolate ganache.  


I'd like to report that I ate 5 (yes FIVE) in two days.  Hence my comment above about not wanting to be anywhere near a machine that can weigh fat content.  Now onto profiteroles...

Bad Taste (never tasted so good)



Way better photo than I normally take, courtesy of GP resident photographer: Stephen Howse

UPDATED DIRECTIONS BELOW

Guilty Pleasure's party on Saturday night had the fabulously horrific theme "Bad Taste". I won't go into the details of our costumes, but in addition to a one-piece sparkly silver Abba-esque jumpsuit for our Waterloo performance (ah-mazing!), JW and I managed to take on the personas of ‘Tina’ and ‘Gloria’ for the first half of the night. For those of you who’ve seen this year’s Oscar nominated 'The Fighter’ – remember Micky and Dicky's seven sisters? We were equally foul-mouthed as that lot, but dressed in an even more inappropriate trailer-park ensemble. Deliciously bad taste for sure!

I used the opportunity to do a wee bit of practice on my piping and writing skills with a swiss meringue buttercream – hence the ornately, if not delicately designed cupcakes in the photo above. I wasn’t a fan of the frosting but the yellow buttermilk cakes were outstanding.  I've made them before and even wrote about them last year, commenting on their tastiness albeit being a bit too dense.  This time around - much fluffier - did a few recipe alterations, that might have made a difference.

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/yellow-buttermilk-cupcakes

- 4 cups all-purpose flour instead of the 3 cups cake flour (which they stubbornly refuse to sell in my local Waitrose) and 1.5 cups all-purpose flour

UPDATE: I've been told the point above is confusing. To be fair, mama knows best - I agree.  What I meant was...recipe calls for BOTH 3 cups cake flour and 1.5 cups all-purpose flour (so 4.5 cups in total).  What I did INSTEAD was just use 4 cups of all-purpose flour.  Kapish?

- Reduced the butter and sugar just a smidgen (about ¼ of sugar and 1 Tbsp butter) – less by design and more because a standard UK butter pack is 250 grams, just nearly a Tb less and figured if I was doing that, then a wee bit of sugar could go as well

Up to you how you play it – but the option is there for the reductions if you so choose – all other measurements were kept the same.

S-W-O-O-N

I don't often swoon (the sort of head over heels heart palpitating joy that's known to turn my face two shades redder with excitement).


Last time I swooned was at a gorgeous pair of hot pink, sparkly, made in Italy Kate Spade heels. Never mind that when I wear them I need to take pain killers they hurt my toes so much.  I'm happy just looking at them.  It was love at first site. 


This time around, it was love at first bite.  Not quite as sexy as my shoes, this afternoon I fell, hard - for some beef brisket. But not just any beef brisket - beef brisket croquets with Asian slaw at Nopi.


Let me explain.


As many people know, one of my favourite restaurants in all of London is Ottolenghi in Islington.  By a stroke of good fortune, FM happened upon a new restaurant in Soho yesterday.  He went to investigate and found out it was the soft opening for Ottolenghi's new restaurant, Nopi. 


Nopi is similar to Ottolenghi in that the menu is quasi tapas style, but very different in it's elegant cream and bronze setting...and no take away items in site.  There's even a proper cocktails menu which has always eluded Ottolenghi.


FM filled me in on his find just as I was walking out the door to meet GT for lunch.  Most certainly serendipity.


Not only did we feast on:

• Beef brisket croquets, Asian slaw 

but also...

• Twice-cooked baby chicken, lemon myrtle salt
• Seared scallops, pickled daikon, green apple
• Prawn toasts, ginger and cucumber dipping sauce 
• Braised winter greens, tahini-yogurt
• Chocolate, peanut brittle, mace, crème fraiche
• Churros, fennel seed sugar, hot chocolate (my least favourite of the bunch)

Next best bit (after the brisket) ... because the restaurant isn't officially open until next Thursday ... our entire bill was 50% off.  Swoooooon. 

Dinner of Champions

An orgy of spiced pecans

Mexican chocolate tart filling

In the fridge, setting

Last Saturday night I was invited over to a friend's flat for 'Latin Tea'. When pressed for a definition for this event I was told, "basically just afternoon tea (tea, cake and drinks). We'll eat, hang out - and see where the night takes us. 5 pm start."

I'd interpreted "see where the night takes us" to incorporating some late night savoury food stuff, and possibly (likely) more drinkies. Instead, after an evening of excessive cake eating, very little tea drinking, and a moderate amount of champagne drinking, we closed out the evening with a midnight snack of muscat and rhubarb tart.  It's amazing I didn't walk out Diabetic.

My friend is a real lover of great food.  But more importantly, he has friends who can support this habit of his by being great cooks and bakers.  I was invited to this get-together with something along the lines of "no pressure to bake anything, but I've a friend who's amazing and he's bringing something.   Really though, no pressure. ;-)"

Right, just because you end your comment with a ';-)' doesn't mean I wasn't going to bring it.  Game face was on - didn't matter that I didn't have much time.  I needed to REP-RE-SENT.  Can you hear the theme song to Rocky?  I did.

Funny, you know generally speaking I don't classify myself as a competitive person.  I think maybe I'm a bit in LaLa land with that one though...considering every time I mention to friends that I'm not competitive a lot of them sort of roll their eyes at me.  Hmmm...

Anyway, I digress. All in all it was a lovely evening with both home-made and bakery bought delicacies.  G's friend made a tarte tartin which was fantastic, and I made a Mexican chocolate tart with 'to-die-for' caramelised spicy pecans on top.  Definitely a winner.

I followed a recipe on epicurious for the filling and pecans, but switched up the crust.  Instead of chocolate cookie crumbs I used shortbread (and then less butter than the recipe called for).  I could say that there was some strategic planning in this shortbread decision, but the truth was - since I was to busy (lazy) to go out and buy the chocolate cookies I took stock of my cupboards and found some lovely shortbread that someone had given me for a Christmas present and used that instead.  Worked a treat!

Haste Makes Waste

I interrupt what you are all doing on this lovely Sunday evening to fill you in on a small 'oopsie' from this weekend.  

In my insanity to try and balance a full-time job (‘full-time’ being 85+ hours including Sat and Sun last weekend), my dancing, blogging, cooking, baking, cake decorating course, scarf knitting, novel reading, bracelet making...I managed a rookie failure of hysterical proportions yesterday.

Last night was January’s GP event and as per usual I was baking up some tasty treats for the girls, the bears, miss greenwood, and all sorts of other cunning characters.  It wasn't like most months when I’d a) planned ahead what I’d be baking b) hadn’t worked insane hours the previous week with little sleep and c) wasn’t feeling like a headless chicken trying to do everything. Saturday was a case of trying to get some chocolate chip cupcakes made whilst in the middle of sorting out costumes and our dance for the night, amongst other long-overdue activities (e.g. buying extension cords and dental floss).

The result?  A lovely assortment of ‘tongue’ cupcakes!

'tongues' - a close relation (the bad ass cousin) to the chocolate chip cupcake 

You see my dear friends, in my attempt to get all of the cupcakes in the oven in one go (I had 2 trays and one 5 inch round spring-form pan), I jammed the spring-form pan in on the same shelf as my my silicone tray. I assumed it fit because with just a little shove everything got right in.  It was tight, but the oven door closed easy-peasy. 

Righty-o, now what I (clearly) didn't realise is that the last row of my silicone tray had been pressed and folded over into the back of the oven - resulting in these disastrously comical 'tongues'.  Seeing as I still had the small cake and 20 perfectly baked cupcakes there were no tears or stress at the kitchen calamity.  

In fact, after a few childish photos pretending to stick out our 'tongues' we just went ahead and ate them.  After all, they were basically chocolate chip cookies.

Happy New Year - and all that palaver.

Roulade with white chocolate and coconut mousse

All tucked up and ready for a snooze in the fridge before getting a slathering of Chocolate Ganache. (I removed the kitchen towel first).

All gussied up and ready for the big Christmas party.

I figure that once you're more than halfway through January, the obligatory "happy new year" that you sprinkle around on a daily basis, gets a bit - well stale.  Seeing is I'm coming through just under the wire, I figure I could do a wee post on my 'Christmas'* food shenanigans.

The centrepiece of 'Christmas' dinner was a questionably crazy, but ultimately successful attempt at a Buche de Noel. Alongside this we had:

1. Braised beef short ribs (family's favourite recipe that apparently I now must make every year)
2. Mashed sweet potatoes with goats cheese, truffle oil and crispy shallots
3. Roasted garlicky brussel sprouts with crispy bacon and maple syrup
4. Home-made bread
5. Oh yes, and 'christmas' cocktails (cranberry simple syrup and Prosecco) and plenty of Oregonian Pinot Noir with the meal

We were all too busy eating that it wasn't until afterwards that I had an "Oh sh$t" moment - with all the excitement I hadn't remembered to take any photos of the actual food to share with you. Take my word for it though, in my opinion (and in the opinion of ACB, Janette, Davida, Debbie and Donna) it was the ultimate.

The buche de noel with chocolate meringue mushrooms and peppermint bark was loosely based off of a Martha recipe found here:

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/birch-de-noel

One must always take the marvellous Martha with a pinch of salt though (e.g. when she says to buy a coconut, break it with a hammer, shave it with a peeler, curl it, bake it, grate it...you can also do as me and just stick some store bought coconut in a tin and place in the oven to slightly toast for 5 minutes).  I also didn't like the idea of a '7-minute frosting' as she has in her recipe - so after a bit of deliberation went with the gut - a chocolate ganache because really, worse case scenario you've got a bucketload of basically chocolate fudge.  This can only be a good thing, right?

*'Christmas' (in quotes) Also known as Christmukah- the American holiday that Jews celebrate.  The one with lots of food, presents, decorations, christmas carols, etc.  Just without the Jesus bit.