Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

This is a great salsa for Elina as it is onion-free and full of pineapple (surprisingly). It goes superbly with pork, and simple to make: chop up a chilli, lime and coriander and mix it all together.

I also tried Michel Roux’s tropical salsa. It is similar, but uses kiwi fruit and mango as well. This makes it quite watery, especially with the other ingredients, so not quite as good as the pineapple.

God bless parents.

Apparently you are not allowed to smoke in maternity wards anymore. Luckily, Elina got me some chocolate cigars instead.

Last month I got the mincing attachment for my stand mixer. It is a bit of a pain to issue. It looks like it is doing nothing for ages but eventually gets there.

We minced up some diced venison and made burgers.

I made a red pepper sabayon a few weeks ago.

You will have to take my word for it that I was using sweet pointed red peppers. I had already taken them off the BBQ by the time I took this photo. You blister the skin then plunge them into icy water so that you can peel them.

The finished sauce.

Spicy chicken marinade. This is a total winner. Make it in the morning and leave tour chicken to sit in it until dinner time. It is slightly spicy, but mild enough for pretty much everyone’s taste.

Red wine marinade. Great for red meat.

As if vinegars are not exciting enough on their own, they can be made even more exciting by adding other stuff. In these bottles I am making a garlic vinegar using white wine vinegar and a rosemary vinegar using a red wine vinegar.

You blanch the ingredients for one minute before refreshing them, then inserting them into a steralised bottle and filling the rest with the vinegar.

I cannot say whether it has been a success yet as you need to leave them for two months before use!

This is one of Michel Roux’s recipes. You heat half a litre of oil (I used sunflower) then dump some herbs into it. I used parsley and tarragon. Leave it to cool and infuse, then strain it and pour it into a steralised bottle.

Whether I can tell the difference between regular oil and herb oil remains to be seen.

I’ve seen a couple of restaurants offering a fruits der mer platter recently, so thought i would give it a crack myself. The name is French and translates to “fruits of the sea”. It typically consists of a mix of shellfish, served over ice.

Mine included a lobster, cut in half down the middle, a crab, crayfish, prawns in the shell, muscles and clams. All of it was bought live from the fish market. I am not normally a lobster fan, but serving it on ice worked really well.

The downside of serving it all on ice is that it created a very slippy base: when carrying the platter the whole array of food slid from side to side, and I even lost a prawn or two moving it to the table.

I served it with two mayonnaises. This was not the plan, but my first one turned out too thin, so I did a second one. I also did a gribiche sauce, which is the pale one in the bowl and a honey mustard sauce (bottom left).

I won’t be doing it again in a hurry: it was too much of a hassle.

We never buy pre-made pizzas in at the Worfolk household. However, I had begun to wonder whether we would actually get better results buying them frozen. My homemade ones were okay, but not the magic I was hoping for. For one, I could not get them crispy enough. I even tried pan frying them.

However, a few weeks ago everything finally came together. Reviewing what I did, I think it was a combination of all the different things I have been trying. So I have tried to codify them into one list.

Give the dough a good knead

I use my stand mixer to knead, so it is easy to leave it running for a while. So I did. I did not time it exactly but I think it was in there for over 10 minutes. I also gave it a longer rise: 2 hours compared to 90 minutes.

Get the oven really hot

Your oven wants to be as hot as possible. Mine, like many domestic ovens, only goes to 250 degrees, so I turn it up to that. I have a granite pizza stone and I have been gradually increasing the time I put it in the oven to heat up. Now I put it into heat up for at least an hour, maybe even longer. If the pizza does not sizzle when it goes on there, it is not hot enough.

Spin the dough

I have tried spinning the dough round in the air, but not with any real structure to it. Now I use a proper system. Roll it out, then spin it. Does this a little at a time and repeat the process over and over. Each spin moves the dough to the edge of the pizza, so you can then roll that out a bit more. This allowed me to get the dough thinner than I have previously.

Leave a gap

When dressing the pizza with the sauce, cheese and toppings, you want to leave a nice thick border around it. This allows the edges of the pizza to puff up and create a lovely light by crispy edge.

Use a wooden peel

I was using a metal peel (pizza paddle) because I was hoping the pizza would stick to it less. Actually, it turns out it sticks to it more. This meant I had to dust it with loads of flour, and so the base ended up tasting of flour if I was not careful. Using the wooden peel means I have to dust less, avoiding any flour left on the base.