My Weekend

I wish it would be weekend every day....;-) Took it very easy this time. Started my Great British Menu Project Friday night. I printed out the recipes from the BBC website and went shopping. My plan was to make the starter and dessert for Sofie. Tried to get plum tomatoes but had to settle for vine tomatoes. I was not going to infuse the onion cream with bacon as Sofie and myself are veggies. The recipe did not state per step how long things will take so it took me longer than the estimated 1.5 hours (incl. prep time time was estimated for 3 hours).

So, I threw the tomatoes in boiling water, peeled them and deseeded them, catching all the juices. Cut the vegetables (carrots, leeks, celery and shallots) small and fried them over a low heat for a couple of minutes. added the tomato paste, basil stalks, bayleaf and garlic and let it bubble for a while before adding the juices from the tomatoes and some tomato juice. This was left to simmer for an hour. The smell was real rich tomato-y. After the hour was up, I took the pot of the heat and left it to cool.

At this stage I had finished a bottle of wine with my dad and was ready to go to bed. So I covered the pot and left it overnight.

The next morning, I strained the 'soup' through a muslin into a bowl. That took quite some time as I didn't want to squeeze. I didn't want any pulp in the soup. After a couple of hours I had enough juice collected and brought it in a pot to the boil and simmered it until it was reduced by a third.
Soaking the gelatin and adding it to the liquid. The tomato jelly was served in a martini glass so I had to buy some. Thanks to Carraig Donn, I didn't have to break the bank. They had lovely Martini glasses with a green tint....matching my Denby. So after the liquid was cooled and before it started to set, I poured it into the glasses and chilled them in the fridge. For the onion cream I sauteed some onions until soft and mixed them with some cream before processing them in a food mill. I then beat the rest of the cream until soft peaks and mixed the lot together.

I then went on to prepare the dessert. I made a couple of Creme Brulee in the past and they always turned out nicely. I am not very good in following recipes but I was determent to do it this time. So I separated 9 eggs, mixed them with caster sugar. I thought I still had enough vanilla pods left (the recipe was calling for 2 pods) but I only had one left. So I used my Vanilla Sugar instead of the normal caster sugar to get as much vanilla flavour as possible. Heated the cream and had it infused with the pod. Mixed it all together and brought it back to a simmer to thicken the cream. The recipe wanted to have the cream in egg shells.....something I didn't want to do so I poured the cream into ramekins. I normally bake my brulee in a bain marie but the recipe just wanted me to chill the mixture.....after a couple of hours....nothing was setting in the ramekin so I went back to the old method and baked it in a bain marie and et voila ...it set nicely.

Then I went into the garden and picked some strawberries (there is nothing better then picking them and eating them straight away). They needed to be marinated in Banyuls wine. So I went Saturday morning to Bubble Brothers and asked Austin about the wine and sure enough he knew what I was talking about. He didn't have the Banyuls but the best next thing. A Mas Amiel 2005 from LANGUEDOC-ROUSSILLON. An expensive marinate but the result was well worth it. I heated about 150ml of the wine together with Star Anise, caster sugar and a bit of water and stir until the sugar dissolved. Poured it over the strawberries and left it to marinate for about 30 minutes before serving it with deep fried tarragon.

For the main course I simply choose to cook spaghetti with a lemon cream sauce for which I sliced my last leek, panfried it a bit in olive oil, added some wine and let it bubble down before adding cream, lemon zest and chives.

Did we like the dinner? Yeap we did. Did I learn something? Yeap, the starter was too rich as a starter. I will have to reduce the amount of jelly and cream. The original recipe calls for a Croque Monsieur which I left out and will do so for the final meal as it is simply too much. Our main course was lovely and light but something I normally do for myself anyway but the dessert was so yum that I was glad that I got the wine. It was well worth it.

Project Completed: 20%

Musical Background: 96fm

Fun Factor: 50%