18 June 2012

Today, I decided to branch out and experiment with a new bread (sorry my beloved butter dough): Brown yeast bread. Unlike other breads which start life as a gorgeous elastic dough, this bread mix looked like something you would muck out of a stable. Sloppy, brown and smelling faintly like molasses ... blurgh. The resulting bread looked pretty, but tasted like it was good for you, so it wasn't for me. 

After the bread I made a Besancon apple tart. You wouldn't want to make this dessert in a hurry - it involves making shortcrust pastry, chilling it, rolling it, lining the tin, resting it, blind-baking it, egg-washing it, blind-baking it again ... and all this before you even get to making the tart! The filling is thin slices of apple arranged painstakingly into a fan shape and then smothered in sieved custard. After baking, the tart was slicked with a seriously thick layer of apricot glaze and then left to rest for a while before being cut. It was delicious, but like a lot of French recipes, time-consuming and temperamental. 

While I was waiting for my tart to cook, I used some leftover pastry to make a miniature gooseberry tart for The Editor. Gooseberries are like rock-hard sour grapes - they are quite delicious but they require an alarming amount of sugar to make them edible. (It was presented to me after dinner with cream and a flower and was delicious enough to soften the inevitable pain of Ireland's latest loss at Euro 2012. Perfect balance between sweet and sour and brought back long-forgotten childhood memories of cheek-suckingly sour gooseberries. Mmm. - Ed).

Finally I made bruschetta with cannellini beans, tomato and basil. It's fancy beans on toast people, I am not going to go into details.

Today we learned how to cook: Gratin of goats cheese with ruby beetroot and pine nuts, Salad of smoked mackerel with beetroot watercress and horseradish sauce, Hot-smoked salmon, Salad of hot smoked salmon beetroot horseradish cream and watercress, Seared chicken with mango salsa and roast sweet potato wedges, Grilled chicken with summer marjoram and lemon, How to prepare a chicken paillarde, Chargrilled chicken paillarde with aioli and roast cherry tomatoes, Pollo al Mattone with French beans and roast onions and sage, Parsley and garlic oil, Gratin of potato and spring onion, Gratin Lyonnaise, Roast Duck salad with lentils pomegranate and rocket leaves, Lemon tart with lemon ice cream and candied julienne of lemon peel, Date tart, Brioche.

Chester update - he has gone from being the least mouldy cheese in the fridge to the mouldiest, stinkiest thing I have ever seen!! (Apart from an old piece of toast I once found behind the couch).