Saturday 22 November - Chocolate and Salted Caramel

Masterchef is on at the moment, and it always makes me want to make 'trios' of desserts. Today I decided to have a play wish some recipes I've used before separately, but try to serve them all on the one plaate.

I made some shortbread, by chucking butter, flour, vanilla paste and some icing sugar into the mixer, then chilling for an hour before rolling out and cutting and baking.

Salted caramel ice cream - I always change ice cream recipes as I find using just egg yolks in the custard seems wasteful, so I use whole eggs and whisked with some sugar, and a teaspoon of cornflour.

The rest of the sugar went into a pan dry, and was heated until it turned into a rich caramel.

Then, the milk and cream added so that the caramel dissoloved into it. I then added the milk mixture to the eggs and thickened it over a low heat. Once the custard was made it was cooled down and then churned in my trusty ice cream maker. When it was almost ready I added half a teaspoon full of Malden Salt.

The chocolate mousse was the bog standard one I was taught at school many years ago - 1 egg per ounce of chocolate, melt the chocolate, stir in the yolk, and then fold in the white - although I did add a spoon of sugar to the white when whisking to stabilise it a bit.

Finally, the salted caramel sauce - I made a dark caramel in the same way as for the ice cream, then added water and warmed until it was all dissolved. Then added some salt right at the end ( I added around half a teaspoon as I like quite a salty flavour) and left to chill. This is best poured right over the mousse when eating.

Saturday 15 November - Wild Boar

Found this on offer in Lidl this week. I've never cooked with it, or even tasted it before, but had seen Rick Stein making a dish of wild boar, chorizo and chestnut stew a few weeks ago so decided to give it a try. 

The recipe started the night before, marinating the meat in redwine and various fresh herbs, along with juniper berries.

After 24 hours the meat was drained and the liquid, vegetables and meat were seperated out.

 

The meat was seared, and some sliced chorizo was added to it, and then the vegetables from the marinade were added back in and browned.

Then, in went the liquids - red vermouth, the wine from the marinade and some beef stock, plus a big handful of dried porcini.

After a couple of hours, in went some chestnuts, and it was all finished off with some wild mushrooms fried in butter.  Waitrose came to our rescue here, as wild mushrooms weren't available anywhere that I looked.

This was served with mashed potato

This was delicious, however, it would work just as well using pork shoulder - I wouldn't go to the expense of using the boar again.

As this meal was a special one for Bob, to say thank you for my beautiful new kitchen, I had to use crab in the starter as it's his favourite.

I found a recipe in the Waitrose magazine for a crab, orange and fennel salad. These are not flavours I would automatically assume would work together, but to our surprise it was delicious. The dressing was made of orange juice, olive oil, honey and chopped mint.

An alternative starter was made for George, who isn't keen on crab - cured beef with parmesan shavings.

 

To round the meal off, little lemon and lime meringue pies, served with a fruit compote.

Quite difficult to make the filling and meringue in small enough quantities to fill these tiny cases.

I made a butter pastry and added an egg yolk and some icing sugar,then blind baked the cases.

Once the filling was added, and cooked until set, I piped the meringue topping on, and they went back in the oven to lightly brown the topping.

These were the perfect size after a filling main course.

Monday 10 November - No Cooking

No cooking has taken place for the last couple of weeks as the great Kitchen upgrade has been underway. This has been a huge disruption as it was a massive undertaking, but it's now usable again with just a few little finishing touches that need to happen.
All of this was done by Bob, with our lovely helper Mel. I did a lot of supervising, paint stripping, painting and making more work by thinking of extra bits I would need (and made a good few cups of tea as well)
The biggest job was to completely remove and replace the rotten Victorian floorboards.

These were replaced with boards, then a concrete board overlay, before the tiling could start - we used the same tiles as in the Utility room so they flowed through the back of the house.

Once the flooring was down, another huge task of unit installation, and cutting up the 4 inch beech work surface (which weighed a ton) and then installing the sink and the associated plumbing.

We also added an additional filter tap alongside the normal mixer tap.

Once the base units were in, the tiling could commence - I spent quite a few weeks constantly checking the Wickes website to get these,  as I had fallen in love with these tiles and they were out of stock when I first spotted them.

Pride of place and the heart of the kitchen is the table, and Bob made this out of some more of the beech worktop, and installed a soft close cutlery drawer into one end of it as there are no other drawers in the kitchen.

For the other side, we didn't want to be hemmed in by fitted units, so Bob designed open plan storage shelving, including a length of worktop alongside the cooker.

Alongside this for extra storage some hanging racks for utensils and pans.

There are still some finishing touches to do - we have stripped the doors from the original larder cupboard and glass fronted cabinets, and these need to be finished off and painted, along with little cosmetic jobs such as touching up paint and grouting, and finishing off some electrics. 

Some before and after photos though so the difference can be seen

The Sink

 

Worktop and wall unit

Shelving

 

Will take more photos as it's finished off, but thrilled to bits with it so far!