Part Three

Lemon Tarte

Well, sort of!

To be honest, I was amazed this came out as well as it did. I had few of the ingredients asked for and sort of made the rest up as I went along. Firstly, it took a search through at least 7 of my recipe books to actually find a lemon tarte, then when I did, it was lemon and almond. Almonds...I looked at the back of the baking cupboard and found a half opened bag of almonds, not ground as suggested in the recipe, but flaked. "They'll do" I thought, so quickly gave them a crush with the rolling pin in the hopes of making them slightly more 'ground' than they were!

Pastry is not my forte and I haven't actually made shortcrust before, but how hard could it be? A simple basic recipe, which I followed well until the butter I was meant to rub in melted too much as I was trying to soften it in the microwave, so I ended up adding little more of the solid stuff and knowing exactly what weight of butter I had added. When finally combined, it look great but it was then that I remembered I really wanted a sweet shortcrust. With complete disregard now for any recipe in front of me, I sprinkled the lot with sugar and rolled it in! It tasted good anyway and I even managed to blind bake it successfully!

Back to the lemon filling. All was going to plan just about...eggs and sugar whisked (except I didn't have icing sugar so substituted for caster sugar instead - what harm could that do?!), lemon zest and juice stirred in, crushed almonds added. It was looking great. So I poured it into the case - which did not leak and held it perfectly, and popped it into the oven to set.

5 minutes in, I sneaked a peak...the top was browning (for browning read burning) nicely, so I quickly covered the lot with foil. When I retrieved the now 'set' tarte twenty minutes later and took the foil off, much of the top also came away! Oh well, a disaster from start to finish!

But it tasted great!

If you'd like to try the real recipe, ensure you have the correct ingredients before you start! It's taken from 'Dangerous Desserts' published by BBC Worldwide:

225g sweet shortcrust pastry

2 eggs

150g icing sugar (not caster!)

4 lemons

100g butter - melted

75g ground almonds

Line 20cm tart pan with rolled out pastry and bake blind for 10 minutes at 220c. Take out baking beans and return to oven for a further 10 minutes or until pastry is golden brown.

Whisk eggs and icing sugar together until fluffy. Mix in grated zest of two of the lemons, the butter, the ground almonds and juice of all 4 lemons. It actually says not to worry if it looks curdled at this stage!

Pour the filling into the pastry case and bake for 25 minutes at 180c until set.

Leave to cool and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.

Hope you have better luck than I did!

Part Two

Cod wrapped in bacon, thyme, rosemary and lemon dressing with dauphinois potatoes

There are many things I would do differently if I cooked this dish again, so I'll add them in as I write, so yours might be an improved version!

Firstly, this is a combination of Jamie and myself. Jamie does a leek and white fish dish with streaky bacon, all in pieces, tossed together with the dressing and baked in the oven. I wanted to 'refine' the aesthetics of it, so instead of using 'loose' strips of bacon, used them as a wrap for the cod pieces. One thing I can say for the bacon, though, is that it is British. Although it took slightly longer to find than usual, the cost was fairly similar as there was an offer on two packs, and I didn't want to feel guilty about not buying British after the Food Fight series this week! Not that I'm easily influenced or anything!

cod fillets or any white fish
a lemon
sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme
olive oil
streaky bacon
baby leeks
potatoes - peeled and sliced thinly
milk
creme fraiche
knob of butter
grated nutmeg
salt and pepper

The potatoes take the longest so begin with them. Add your sliced potatoes to a pan and just cover with milk and a dollop of creme fraiche and butter. Grate over some nutmeg, add salt and pepper to taste and put on a medium heat.
As the milk starts to heat and thicken, don't forget to stir occasionally as the potatoes will stick.
When virtually cooked through, transfer the potatoes and cream mixture to an ovenproof casserole, or individual dishes if you prefer, and bake in a hot oven (180) until the potatoes have absorbed most of the cream mixture.
You can add finely chopped garlic to the pan at the beginning if desired.

For the fish, first make the dressing. Crush fresh thyme and rosemary with a little pepper. Add a couple of glugs of olive oil and the juice of a lemon. I suggest you don't add salt as the streaky bacon used to wrap the fish is salty enough.
Next, par boil the baby leeks for about 3 minutes, then drain. I used strips of normal leeks, but I would suggest these don't really need parboiling as the baby leeks would.
Toss the fish and leeks in the dressing.
Take the pieces of fish and wrap each one in a strip of streaky bacon. If you run the back of a knife along each strip first, they will stretch nicely to a good length.
Pan fry these for one minute to begin to crisp the bacon.
Transfer the fish and the leeks to an ovenproof tin / dish (or add the leeks to the frying pan if you have an oven-proof one), pour over any remaining dressing or add a touch more olive oil if needed, and put into the oven at about 170c for 15 minutes. I overcooked the fish, I think by panfrying for too long before-hand, so make sure you check the fish and remove if cooked, leaving the leeks to crisp up.

Serve the fish on a bed of the crispy leeks.

Part One

Have attempted a three course dinner tonight! My boyfriend was at work all day so I had the time to potter about in the garden, disappear to the shops and catch up with the food shopping. I was looking for baby leeks, fillet of beef, cod loins (I had to look up exactly where this 'cut' was - either side of the backbone of a quadruped apparently - didn't know fish had 4 legs, but there you go!), streaky bacon, lemons, eggs and various other ingredients for the weekend. However, as I began my trek around the supermarket, I noticed that many of the shelves were bare. According to the man behind the butcher counter, this was because they'd had a rush due to the inclement weather forecast!

So...the menu for this evening was

Carpaccio of beef with watercress and Parmesan shavings
Cod wrapped in bacon, thyme, rosemary and lemon dressing with dauphinois potatoes
Lemon tarte

Part One

This was the simple one of the three. Well, it was meant to be. First, season the beef and sear it in a hot pan with a little oil. Next, slice finely into rounds and plate up. Top with watercress and Parmesan shavings and drizzle with lemon juice, good quality olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar. So, I arrived at stage 2 and attempted to slice the fillet with my new, ultra-sharp knife which I bought today and am very excited about! I cut a lemon in half without any effort or 'cutting' at all! It's like magic!

Sorry, little digression there. So, as I was saying, slicing the beef should have been the easy part...Remember when I said there was little on the shelves? There was also very little choice of beef fillet left at the butchers: I opted for the most cylindrical of the three, but it had a few 'flaps' rather than being smoothly round. Hence, when I came to cut it, no 'perfect rounds' appeared as in all the lovely pictures you see of carpaccio. Mine was more 'chunks', but cooked to perfection none-the-less!

SCC takes precendence

Apologies for the lack of post yesterday. Time grew short during the day and an important SCC meeting couldn't be missed in the evening! SCC, for those of you not involved, stands for Swansea Curry Club. Food usually sets the tone for these evenings, and, this being a food blog, you'd be expecting the curries to be the 'star' of this particular post. Last night, however, too much chatting and general merriment reigned, so a thorough analysis will have to wait until the next event, from which I will give you a detailed food review!

The meeting was a reunion of all those who attended the annual conference, held this time in Goa. As usual, the atmosphere was one of bubbly enthusiasm, excitement and anticipation at the prospect of the main presentation and we were not to be disappointed. Our host had excelled himself; the conference room itself was fantastically equipped and all enjoyed reminiscing over those halcyon days, waiting (some longer than others!) for the fish to bite. Food, as is usual at these events, was organised very well, thanks to Stuart / Matt and our host. The local Indian take-away provided more food than we could shake a stick at and in particular, several members found the green chilli madras worthy of note! (Click here for a recipe.) Despite having to leave earlier than most - you just don't know when that last train to Benelux will depart - and my lack of drinking ability, I'd like to congratulate all involved in hosting yet another successful SCC event.

Now, onto other matters. Thursday night's tea! A simple recipe, quick to whip up in a short time: Salmon Parcels. Take a fillet of salmon and place in the centre of a large piece of foil. Mix up a couple of spoonfuls of wholegrain mustard with a large dollop of creme fraiche. Spoon over the salmon, then fold foil loosely around it. Easy. I served it with savoury rice.

Raclette

As you know, I live from one meal to the next and am, generally, always thinking about food! The book I'm currently reading is, also, based around the nutritious stuff: Julie and Julia; My Year of Cooking Dangerously, by Julie Powell. It documents her year trying to cook her way through an old classic - Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Childs. I must admit, I'm a little disappointed: The food and adventures sound great, such as the first time she flips a pancake successfully (can you believe that someone can reach the age of 30 without flipping a pancake? No, neither could I!) and are very interesting. A couple of times I've laughed out loud, but on the whole, it's really not that well written. For a start, I didn't expect her to be American, (don't ask me why but I presumed the author was British) and therefore, because cooking is quite a specialised subject, the vocabulary is also quite unusual. It's still recognisable, but I think American cooking is, on the whole, very different from British cooking - not for the worse, or better, but just...different. Only a few chapters left to go so I'll keep you updated!

Talking of foods from around the world...last night was Raclette. For those of you who haven't heard of this, Raclette is actually a hard Swiss cheese, but also a 'dish'! The idea is you chop up mountains of vegetables into thin strips, add any bacon / prosciutto / pre-cooked cubes of potatoes / herbs / creme fraiche - really whatever you'd like, and grated Raclette. If you can't find Raclette, a Mature Cheddar, Gruyere or Emmental will do the trick.

Now comes the fun part - the cooking! It's sort of a DIY 'at the table' barbeque! There's a little portable electric grill with a hot plate - sometimes a hot stone - on the top. The idea is that you choose your mix of ingredients, cook it lightly on top, then put into the little pans, sprinkle with cheese and pop under the grill part of the machine. You can be as inventive as you'd like with the ingredients and even use it to cook kebabs, but I'd suggest the cubes of meat weren't too chunky.

A demain,
Merlotti x

Guilty!

Erm - this was all that was left of the cakes I made two nights ago. It's taken me until now to 'fess up' about them as I forgot to take pictures so desperate was I to eat them ;) I was longing for something sweet to eat and didn't have anything in, but I did have one egg - it's amazing what you can knock up with things from the cupboard! We didn't even wait for them to cool once out of the oven, wolfing down three each within as many minutes.

Three Little Pigs!

Dinner was lovely - much better than expected! The pork rolls needed quite a lot of holding together with cocktail sticks, but tasted scrummy - the pan-frying first really helped develop the flavour. We didn't have pasta or potato with it but a simple rocket and watercress salad with a honey and mustard dressing.

Three Little Pigs

pork escalopes
apple sauce - you could even make your own!
cinnamon and nutmeg
cheese

Honey and Mustard Dressing

honey
wholegrain mustard
olive oil
red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

For the pork, mix a sprinkle of nutmeg and cinnamon to the apple sauce and stir well.
Spread a little onto each escalope and cover with a thin layer of grated cheese.
Season and, here comes the difficult part, roll, try to keep all the stuffing inside! Seal with cocktail sticks but don't forget to tell the guests to take them all out!
Pan fry to seal the meat, then place into a hot over for about 10-15 minutes.

For the dressing, put a dollop of the mustard, a squeeze of the honey, a large splash or two of oil and a smaller splosh of the vinegar into a jar.
Add salt and pepper, screw the lid on tight and shake!
Pour over the salad and drizzle over the pork.