Canapes - 21st of August

Any excuse to make canapes and this time we took the opportunity to organise a little party to coincide with our dear friends Sue, Germain and little Ellie's visit to London from Tokyo. Always fun to gather friends together and i decided to have a few canapes.. nice and simple on paper but it was hard work too! 
So, here is what i did: 
- Sausage rolls
- Mini pizzas with 3 toppings: Feta/pesto/pine nute, goats cheese/onion marmalade/thyme, tomato/olive/pepperoni/mozzarella
- Pea/mint/truffle soup shots
- mini skewers with parma ham/mozzarella/figs
- mini skewers with ribbons of smoked salmon/cucumber
- Bruschetta with tomato/basil/onion salsa, roast beef/horseradish/creme fraice/parsley
- Mini chocolate pots with crushed amaretti biscuits
- Eton mess
- mini tarts with custard/strawberries
- chocolate dipped strawberries (dark/white chocolate, chopped pistachios and crussed amaretti biscuits

A lot of the food could be prepared in advance and then cooked/assembled during the evening. They all went really quickly and i guess they were either very nice or people were very hungry!! I captured most of them on camera but not all.. see photos below.

The pea soup was made in advance and then i just re-heated and poured into little disposable shot glasses!
For the salmon/cucumber canapees i used a potato peeler to make ribbons of a cucumber.. then just threaded it together with the salmon on sticks.. squeeze of lime and some black pepper..

Here are the mini pizzas waiting to go in the oven. I then just added a little drizzle of fresh pesto to the Pizzas with the Feta cheese when they came out of the oven, scattered some basil over and voila! For the goats cheese pizzas i added a little dollop of onion marmelade when they were ready to eat. I bought basic pizza mix to make life easier and cut them out using a cookie cutter.. Very easy and i personally think they look fab!

Sausage rolls - shop bought puff pastry and some good quality sausages. i removed the sausage skin and place on top of the puff pastry added some chopped herbs and rolled together. Rolled them into foil and kept them in the fridge until needed. Then just cut them into small bite size pieces and put them in the oven for 10 min.

Strawberries.. simply dipped in dark or white chocolate and then either left plain or dipped in chopped pistachios or crushed amaretti biscuits...i totally forgot about them during the evening and they finally made it out when there were a handful of guests left.. oh well, better late than never i guess..

Chocolate pots - easy to do in advance. Made out of Cream, dark chocolate, sugar and egg yolks.Poured into shot glasses and chilled. Then topped with crushed amaretti biscuits.

I have to admit that the little mini tart cases were shop bought from M & S.. i customised them and filled them with dark or white melted chocolate then topped them with vanilla custard and a quarter of a strawberry.

Easy peasy Pannacotta - 8th of August

I love having people over for food.... and i tend to plan and obsess for days in advance going through cook books, old food magazines etc.

We were going to have some friends over for lunch on the Sunday and after a lot of thinking i decided on doing a little pea and mint soup in a mug as a starter.. nice and simple and best of all: can be prepared and re-heated!

For Main i decided on pan fried cod on crushed new potatoes and sauce vierge.. loosely based on a recipe i found. It turned out ok but not great so i am not going to write down a recipe here.. my dessert on the other hand turned out great.. so i will focus on that :-)

I decided to make a pannacotta which is great since you can prepare it in advance (needs to set in the fridge for at least 4 hours) so i did that the evening prior. Here is the recipe for 5 to 6 portions:

Ingredients:

600 ml of Single cream
2 leaves of gelatin
50 grams of caster sugar
1 vanilla pod or a tsp of vanilla bean paste
1 tbsp of dark rum

Put the gelatin leaves in a bowl of cold water.

Heat the cream and the sugar in a pan with the scraped out vanilla pod seads, stir and bring to the boil briefly. Take of the heat and add the softened and squeezed out gelatin leaves and the rum. Stir and pour through a fine sieve into little ramekins. Put in the fridge for at least 4 hours or over night.

I also made a berry coulis through heating up mixed berries with a little sugar to taste, then putting them through a sieve to get rid of the little pips from the raspberries.

To serve i made some really simple little tuiles. You can have a lot of fun shaping these!

Ingredients:

50 gram softened butter
50 gram icing sugar
1 egg
50 gram plain flour

Cream the butter and sugar together well then add the egg, whisk and then fold in the flour.

Put a teaspoon of the mix on a nonstick oven tray/silicon paper then take a knife and spread out to a paperthin cookie shape. You can also put the mix in a piping bag and pipe out little shapes (like my hearts in the picture) it is then optional to add chopped nuts (i added pistachios) before baking for 4-5 min on 200 C. (makes about 15 - 20 depending on size)

To get the classic tuile shape you need to quickly put the still warm biscuits on a rolling pin since they harden very quickly.

I then used up the leftover pistachios and mixed them with melted sugar to make some pistachio brittle for texture and crunch.

Assembly:

Briefly dip the ramekins in hot water to loosen the pannacotta, then tip out on a plates. Decorate with some raspberries (i used red and yellow), the coulis (poured in a line from a bottle). Sprinkle some of the caremellised pistachios on the pannacotta and on the side of the plate. Place a tuile heart in the pannacotta and a tuile biscuit on the side... and voila! YUM

Le Bouchon Breton in Spitafields - 7th of August

I book a lot of restaurants through Toptable..(http://www.toptable.co.uk/) one of my favorite websites where you get 200 points every time you book through them. Win win situation!

However, the points expire after a year and i received a couple of emails telling me that 800 points were due to expire soon so i decided to spend some points towards a free meal for me and my boyfriend.

Normally you can redeem points at restaurants with a reduced menu but when looking at the list i spotted a new addition, Le Bouchon Breton http://www.lebouchon.co.uk/breton/index.php that said that for 3000 points pp you can order 2 courses from the a la carte.. not bad at all so i booked for Saturday night.

The restaurant is on the 1st floor in Spitafields and upon arriving we were seated on the terrace part. It was pretty busy and they had a piano player and a singer entertaining the tables. The head waiter was very french and very special.. i did look around for a hidden camera at one point since the service was like something out of Fawlty towers :-)

However, i can't complain about the food. I had a goats cheese in filo pastry with a red pepper sauce to start which was just like it said on the menu.. and i do have a thing for goats cheese. Lovely and tangy with crisp filo pastry around it.. yum.

We then shared a Cout de boeuf (normal price £26 per person!) - a massive hunk of beef carved for you at the table. Served with french fries, bearnaise (lovely bearnaise by the way) and a side salad. It was lovely but we didn't manage to finish it all despite my boyfriend being a total carnivore who craves protein in large amounts ;-)

We were too full for dessert but the list looked good with a cheese board and lots of different sundaes.

Service was slightly strange and a lot of people had to wait a long time to order / get the bill etc but since we were dining for free we didn't really care. Our bill (drinks only incl. service charge) came to £16.. Thank you Toptable!

The Langham - Wonderland afternoon tea - 31st of July

What is more English than traditional afternoon tea? Such a great invention! However, should only be had in moderation since you probably consume enough calories to last you for 3 days!


Since my partners parents were visiting from Germany we decided to book in for afternoon tea at the Langham in London. http://london.langhamhotels.co.uk/restaurants/palm_court.htm

They have an amazing afternoon tea menu called "Wonderland" based on the famous Alice of course :-)

The Palm court room where the tea is served is stunning with lots of muted colours, glass and gold. There is also a man playing piano during the afternoon - very civilised indeed.

The tea menu is as long a a wine list in a restaurant and it is quite fun to read about all the different tea's. I decided on a "Lychee red" with was delicious.

We got a little welcome treat of "vanilla pannacotta with pineapple and lemon grass".. very nice and very moorish.


We started off with the finger sandwiches, there were 5 different kinds of sandwiches including egg & cress, chicken & tarragon, cucumber & cream cheese, tuna & sweetcorn and salmon & horseradish. I was so hungry that i forgot to take a photo at this point (i only had a small breakfast and no lunch in order to prepare for the calories ahead).

We then moved on to some wonderful, and still warm from the oven scones. There were 2 kinds, with raisins or without served with strawberry jam and clotted cream. Lovely!


However, we could not over indulge in the scones since we still had the lovely wonderland pastries to eat.

We had some amazing little almond madeleines topped with a pistagio cream and fresh raspberries - my favorite! There were also orange carrot cakes with a violet glaze and edible gold, white chocolate and strawberry eclairs and shortbread lollipops. The latter were quite boring but looked great.



We walked out of the Langham clutching our bellies.. but it was worth it!

The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow - 29th of July

I have lived in London for over 12 years now.. and i have never been to Cornwall! When you live somewhere you tend to think that there is "always tomorrow" to do the sightseeing and explore what is around you.

That is why i really like having visitors coming over to visit.. that kind of "forces" you to go and see the British Museum or other attractions that you have been putting off for years.. and in this instance - Cornwall!

Granted that Cornwall is quite a long journey away (south west England) but it has been on my to do list for a long time since so many people rave about how lovely it is. So, my partners parents came over for a visit and wanted to go to Cornwall so away we went!

We decided to visit Padstow which is also famous for being home to the one and only Rick Stein and his emporium of restaurants. http://www.rickstein.com/

We went to his flagship restaurant called "The Seafood restaurant" for dinner on the Thursday night and i have to admit that my expectations were very high indeed. The restaurant was buzzing and very busy with most tables full.. a mix of couples and families.

When in a seafood restaurant you have to have seafood of course so i started with "Seared scallops and serrano ham served with salad leaves and a sherry vinegar dressing". They were very nice and perfectly cooked and i was happy with my choice but i did expect them to have more of a wow factor.


For main i had "Grilled fillets of John Dory with girolle mushrooms served with rocket and sunblushed tomatoes". The fish was lovely and perfectly cooked and the girolles really worked with the dish. Enjoyed it very much.


For dessert i had to have the "Chocolate fondant with sour cherries" which was nice and gooey in the middle like it should be. I did think that it needed some cream or vanilla ice cream with it though.




All in all it was a nice meal but kind of traditional - no twists, you get exactly what it says on the menu- he keeps it simple with really good and fresh ingredients.