Scrumptious outings

Much as I enjoy pottering around on my own in the kitchen, my interest in food has also been taking me out and about in the last few months. In fact, it's been taking me to some really great places in the last month or so. In fact, I can't really believe how wonderful these events have been - not a single dud mouthful between them! So I thought I'd share. And recommend. Oh, how I recommend.

The Breakfast Club by What Rachel Ate

Rachel is one of my very favourite food bloggers. You know those bloggers, or chefs, who seem to get excited about the very same ingredients and combinations that you do? In the same way as the contents page of Nigel's Real Food reads like a list of my favourite foods (sausages, chocolate, sandwiches, ice cream and so on!), Rachel's every post feels like it's designed with me in mind. I have made, and loved, Courgette fritters with tomato and almond fritters, but I also have my eye on Strawberries with elderflower and pistachio yoghurt, Pumpkin and goats' cheese tart and Butternut squash falafel, amongst many other things.

And now she's doing pop-up brunches, afternoon teas and dinners in her home Brixton, so I gathered Mr 'Splorer, lil sis and lil sis's fella for a champagne brunch a few weekends ago. (The champagne was provided by us - I had some cava left over from New Year and lil sis's fella apparently has a cupboard full of champagne, as he works in the theatre and is bombarded with the stuff!)

We ate:

Grapefruit, lime and orange juice (which goes wonderfully with champagne!), whilst admiring our granola to take away. Which was later discovered to be so scrumptious I had to warn Mr 'Splorer off eating mine on pain of serious punishment.

Praline and custard pastries

Potato pancakes, poached egg, sausages and roast tomatoes (these tomatoes were eaten up with relish by the two non-tomato-fans in my corner - one of which was me).

Pumpkin and chocolate cake

And oh, how delicious it all was! You know it's been a good meal when everyone has different favourites. I was totally blown away by the praline and custard pastries - especially as I'm not usually a big fan of custard (or mustard, much to general amusement!). But these pastries were just so moist and nutty. Meanwhile Mr 'Splorer was a big fan of the cake and little sis loved the potato pancake/sausage course. But we all went away extremely happy and full. And pretty much as soon as I got home, I got in touch with Rachel to ask her to do a private event for me, so her wonderful cooking will reappear on these pages sometime soon. Hurrah!


Cambridge Cookery School's Daily Bread course

This was Mr 'Splorer's Christmas present. So I went along to, ahem, keep him company. I think the school is relatively new - it's definitely very shiny. We were there from 10am to 2pm and in that time managed to make a basic white loaf, enriched rye rolls, soda bread, sourdough (the dough for that was already ready) and Swedish cinnamon buns. Our teacher, the lovely Tine, also showed us how to make the basic white dough into focaccia and how to deep fry balls of the cinnamon bun dough into little doughnuts that can be rolled in sugar and then dipped in jam. And all this while handing out dozens of helpful tips about bread making. And she made Mr 'Splorer's day by giving him some of her sourdough starter!

Sourdough

Cinnamon buns ready to go into the oven

Rye rolls, brushed with golden syrup - my favourites. So delicious with cheese!

Soda bread, after we'd been at it to have with our smoked salmon mousse for lunch. Yum!

Some of the best focaccia I've ever had in my life. So soft and squishy.

Doughnut with jam

The day was not cheap (about £80 each), so it was a bit of a treat. But really, it was totally worth it. We learnt so much about bread making in general, had a wonderful lunch and had all the great recipes and LOADS of bread to take away. It was really inspiring too, and I am now determined to make enriched rye rolls my signature dish. And maybe doughnuts too...

The Secluded Tea Party by Miss Sue Flay

This came about as a tweet-up suggested by Deepa (who makes amazingly pretty jewellery, by the way), so this afternoon she, Ireena of Not Another Food Blog, Sarah and I headed to a top secret location to partake of an extremely decadent tea party.

Elderflower and grape fizz

Sandwiches with the crusts cut off!

Red onion and bacon tart

Chocolate macarons with a vanilla cream filling

Check out the homemade scone stand made from plates and a cup!

Homemade fruit scones with clotted cream and apricot and amaretto preserve

A rather lovely cup of teapigs chai tea to wash it all down with (each person had their choice of tea)

The absolutely spectacular 'decadent chocolate ganache cake'

She made these chocolate hearts herself

Miss Sue Flay herself, doing the honours

Moist and very chocolatey - all you could wish for in a cake!

It was all absolutely delicious and we had a fine old time, chatting about important issues of the day, such as sweet v. savoury, our trashy TV favourites and where to get a good meal in Cambridge. An absolutely perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

See also Deepa's review here.

So, I cannot recommend any one of these three outings highly enough. I feel extremely lucky to have partaken of such culinary riches - it's definitely cheered up my January.

Holiday eating

I'm a bit behind, I think. All over food blogsville the talk is of new year's resolutions and of healthy soups with which to face post-festive heavy tummy syndrome. But I still want to talk about holiday food! (Though if you are after a good simple soup, you could a lot worse than this Spiced lentil soup I wrote about in October.) So, by way of a cheerio to Christmas and New Year, I thought I'd do a quick whizz through some culinary events of the last month of so.

In December, my great aunt sent me a cookie cutter out of the blue, presumably with a view to being on the receiving end of some cookies! I thought it was a reindeer, but a little light Googling later, I now know it's an elk. Which is great, because I can make the cookies all year round! The recipe for pepparkakor (Swedish ginger biscuits) that came with the cookie cutter was fantastic (though it made industrial quantities of cookie dough). I'll have to make some January elks and blog the recipe.

Mmmm, sloe gin!

For Christmas Eve I made a chocolate log, or bûche de noël. I used Delia's chocolate cake recipe, filled it with whipped cream and then made a chocolate ganache icing. Speaking of which, chocolate ganache icing is totally mental - all the recipes involve adding chocolate to hot cream. Which makes the chocolate split. I managed it the second time by melting the chocolate first and whisking it all up together immediately. But any more chocolate ganache icing tips would be gratefully received!

And the most important thing is that the ganache icing turned out really well. In fact, I was really pleased with my chocolate log - definitely one to add to the holiday repertoire.

This triumphant Christmas Day dessert wasn't strictly speaking one of my creations. Little sis and her fella made the Mont Blanc layer cake from a recipe by Dan Lepard. Layers of meringue, cream, chestnut purée and chocolate - amazing! And every dessert looks better with sparklers.

In the inbetweeny period between Christmas and New Year, little sis came visiting and we undertook a new cookery challenge - pork pibil. It's a slow cooked pork dish from Mexico. And it is, without doubt, the first recipe I've ever cooked from a YouTube video of a film director cooking it:

 

It took some speciality shopping, but I managed to find achiote (annatto seeds) and banana leaves in our local Chinese shop, of all places. 

We marinated our meat overnight for extra achioteness.

 

and served it with rice, guac and pink pickled onions from Mexican Food Made Simple

However, this was one of those recipes where you think "hmm, that's quite nice, but I could make it a lot better. I want to make it again right now, and make it better". It wasn't as tender as we had hoped and it was rather watery - I really must stop buying meat from supermarkets! So I hope to be back with this one too. And if anyone has any great recipes for pork pibil, please do let me know.

For New Year's Eve, Mr 'Splorer and I produced a slightly last minute pomegranate themed dinner for a couple of friends. As so often happens, the best bits of the meal were right at the beginning and right at the end. 

The tequila sunrises (using the tequila purchased for the pork pibil) were surprisingly fruity and delicious. I can only put it down to my home-made grenadine. I found the recipe here, but basically what you do is reduce pomegranate juice by half and then add equal amounts of sugar (so I started with 4 cups, reduced it to 2 and then added 2 cups of sugar). Mr 'Splorer and I have been living on orange juice and grenadine, which surely must be called a sunrise, ever since. 

Mr 'Splorer made this amazing Pomegranate Jewel Cake from Nigella's Feast. It's one of those no flour, all eggs and ground almonds and lemons numbers, with a nutty, moist texture, and got polished off in record time! And it looks great - perfect for a celebratory occasion. Becky of Girl Interrupted Eating has posted the recipe already (with an orange zesty cream - yum!) here. Although we discovered that it goes surprisingly well with Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream.

And last, but not least, is the reprise of the Mincemeat Crumble Tart from love and a licked spoon. This is definitely going to become a seasonal favourite. This year I made extra mincemeat in preparation. Pastry, apples, mincemeat, crumble - heaven on a plate! Mr 'Splorer just had three portions. Oh, and it goes wonderfully with Greek yoghurt.

So, I hope you had a sparkling Christmas and New Year, and that the dreaded return to work tomorrow morning doesn't make you feel too fizzled.