#25 - Chinese spiced duck, turkish delight jelly

This was meant to be for a dinner party - but that was doomed with drop outs left, right and centre :(

But after spending 2 days marinading the duck I just had to share it with you...

Again the main course was scarfed down without any pictures, but I got the recipe from Domestic Sluttery so you can see it here:

http://www.domesticsluttery.com/2012/01/sluttishly-savoury-chinese-spiced.html

So all I need to add is that it was weelll worth the wait in marinading time, the flavours were spectacular and although I think I still need to work out my oven temperatures (mine turned out a bit darker/singed), but very nice cripsy tasty duck.

I served it with pak choi and pepper stir fry noodles - even picky P liked it.

To follow up a light dessert was required, and again I stole inspiration from Olive magazine for these little ones:

Turkish Delight jellies (enough for 6):

soak 4 leaves of gelatine in cold water until softened. Put 4 tbsp rose -syrup, the juice from one lemon and 6 tbsp caster sugar in a pan with 400ml water and heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Squeeze the gelatine and add, stirring until dissolved. Add 6 tbsp Grand Marnier. Strain into 6 small glasses and chill for about 4 hours or overnight until set.

My variation above includes a rose water and raspberry creme patisserie that went wrong on the macaroon madness day and needed using up - a perfect paring!

One note on the recipe is that mine do not look the correct (read same) colour as those in the magazine, so I suspect they did not use Grand Marnier in the photographed recipe, but instead another pale orange liqueur like Triple Sec or Cointreau, which must work just as well :)

The Camden Road Cook

#24 - Marvellous Macaroons!

hmmmm I'm OBSESSED with macaroons at the moment....

So I booked myself on the Marvellous Macaroon course at the Atelier des Chefs.

We learnt some top tips, but the best bit was tasting the end results et voila:

The yellow ones were filled with a lime, ginger buttercream.....hmmm

The pink ones were filled with peanut butter creme patisserie and raspberry jam (not so sure about this one as I don't like peanuts except in Thai food)

The olive green ones were filled with salted butter caramel - that WAS the highlight!

here are some close ups:

Nom nom nom!!

So inspired by what seemed easy at the course I attempted my own....

The brown are chocolate shells (flavoured with cocao) filled with a chocolate honey ganache.

The pink are that vivid colour from using powder food colouring - aint it fab!

We used the left over ganache to fill the pink shells and also made some lime buttercream to finish off the last ones.

The pink were meant to be filled with a rose and raspberry creme patisserie - unfortunately my first time making it and it just didn't thicken enough - too runny for macaroon filling, so we dipped the odd ones in it instead!

The chocolate shells didn't turn out quite as pretty as the pink ones, but everyone

agreed that they tasted good ;)

The Camden Road Cook - signing off with a mouth full of macs!

#23 - Dinner party no 2, tarra-gone chicken and chocolate mousse

So for dinner party number 2 I was planning on making tarragon chicken with chocolate mousse as my dessert.

The tarragon chicken is from a recipe in Olive magazine and has one, well maybe two ingredients - Tarragon and Chicken.... so what could I not find in Sainsburys??

A complete lack of tarragon, they did have chicken though!!

So this is my tweak on the recipe using lemon thyme instead - lemon and thyme and chicken go well so I thought it would be a good combination to try.

For 4 you'll need the following:

sunflower oil 1tbsp

shallots 2 sliced

garlic 2 cloves crushed

chicken thighs 8 skinless and boneless

dry white wine 100ml (and the rest of the bottle for the chef?!)

chicken stock 400ml - I religiously use the jelly ones now

cornflour 1/2 tbsp

half-fat creme fraiche 3 tbsp

tarragon leaves (or if you want to follow my variation lemon thyme) 2 tbsp roughly chopped

- heat the oil in a large non stick frying pan and gently fry the shallots for 5 mins until soft and lightly coloured. Add the garlic for the last minute of the cooking time.

- Season the chicken thighs and add to the pan. Fry for 2-3 minutes, turning once until very lightly coloured. Pour in the wine and bring to the boil. Stir in the stock and return to a gentle simmer. Cook for 10 mins.

- Mix the cornflour with 1/2 tbsp cold water and stir into the pan. As soon as the sauce thickens, stir in the creme fraiche and tarragon (lemon thyme) then season. Remove from the heat. Serve with new potatoes.

I also served green beans with my lemon thyme chicken and the 3 of us polished off the lot! (Enough for 4 people supposedly - I blame V&I!)

I don't have any pictures of the chicken seeing as we polished it off waay too quickly, but I managed to pause and take a couple of pictures of the Chocolate Mousse before we dove into that!

The chocolate mousse was another Olive recipe - thanks to T for buying me that gift subscription!

Again this serves 4 and this time we didn't eat the lot between the 3 of us as it was very rich:

125g good quality plain chocolate

4 eggs separated

2 tsp golden caster sugar

splash of booze (this is my addition - brandy or grand marnier would be very nice!)

Break up the chocolate and put into a heatproof bowl resting on top of, but not in, a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until the chocolate melts (this is where I would add booze). Cool a little, then stir in the egg yolks mixing well.

Whisk the whites in a bowl until the form soft peaks, then stir in the sugar and whisk again to regain the texture you have lost. Carefully fold the egg whites into the chocolate mix, spoon into small glasses or I used small coffee cups and chill until set.

This is ideal to make the day before a dinner party and keep in the fridge, I actually made it in the morning and it was set by dinner time.

Happy eating!!

The Camden Road Cook

#22 - The First Dinner Party of 2012, Crispy Salmon & Chocolate Torte

So as you've guessed from the title the first dinner party of 2
012 was sponsored by Chocolate Torte (not tart! and not a pastry item, but rather a flourless chocolate cake, adapted from a chocolate fondant recipe by good ol' Gordie Ramsay).

So key skills I used/learnt here were whisking egg whites, folding chocolate mixture, how to melt chocolate with liquor (bung it in the microwave - v good tip!) and also a reminder than my oven runs hot.

Yep how could I forget that you're thinking, I must use it a lot...

well I always forget that baking requires my oven to be at a different temperature to 180 which is where I keep it for most cooking without a recipe.... so the first

dinner party of 2012 could also be said to be sponsored by 'crispiness' or 'caramelised' or 'brown bits', the good news is that the salmon was MEANT to be crispy and that the cake tasted good, albeit a tad dry, the vast quantity of chocolate and butter making up for the over cookness I like to think!

So I think I agree with BraveTart (BraveTart.com - my new fav blog) that all bakers need to know your ovens! And learning from that I'll be running mine at a slightly lower temp for the next cooked dessert....

So for the torte you'll need 25g butter and 25g grated chocolate to coat the tin, (20cm, springform if you have it)

350g dark chocolate at 65% cocoa solids

1 tablespoon instant coffee (I omitted this and next time I'll add a splash of grand marnier instead!)

2 tablespoons of boiling water

2-3 tablespoons of brandy (see point about coffee above!)

4 large eggs separated

100g unsalted butter, softened

pinch of salt

200g caster sugar

1) So I struggled slightly with the coating the tin part - apparently you're meant to cut a piece of baking parchment to line the base of the tin, set this to one side, brush the inside of the tin with the melted butter and chill until set - then coat the side with the grated chocolate.

Now to me I think the butter has got to be wet for the chocolate to stick - hence I had a LOT of grated chocolate to tip out - next time I'll coat with the chocolate whilst the butter is soft and then chill until the butter/chocolate coating is set...

2) break up the chocolate and place in a large heatproof bowl - dissolve coffee in boiling water, stir in the brandy and melt the chocolate in the microwave (2 mins on high). Stir until smooth and set aside to cool. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C/gas 4 (or in my case

probably 160 to lessen crispiness lol!)

3) beat the egg yolks and butter in a bowl until creamy - if it looks split then your butter isn't warm enough so just allow it to warm up a bit and it'll go creamy. Then beat in the chocolate mixture.

4) in another bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until softly stiff, then gradually whisk in the sugar until you have a firm glossy meringue.

5) Carefully fold the meringue into the chocolate mixture a third at a time, until its evenly incorporated. Spoon the mixture into the cake tin and level the top. Bake for approx 40 minutes until risen and the top is crispy (see it was meant to be like that!!). the torte might crack a little and the mixture underneath will still be soft

6) turn off the oven and leave the cake to cool slowly inside for about an hour - remove and cool completely, but DO NOT CHILL - this torte should be moist and soft.

7) to unmould run a table knife around the side of the torte to loosen it, then invert onto a serving plate:

I then turned it back up the other way as it looked better and to hide the crispy bits - the perfect solution = left over grated chocolate and blueberries, serve with creme fraiche!

As for the rest of the dinner - I did the Jamie Oliver 30 minute meal for crispy salmon, which involves a large amount of salmon with mexican accompaniments, including tortilla wraps, guacamole, salsa, courgette salad, rice and sour cream - definitely recommend it!

Here's one someone blogged before:

http://delishuss.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/crispy-salmon-jazzed-up-rice-baby-courgette-salad-gorgeous-guacamole/

And enjoy...

The Camden Road Cook

#21 - Hello 2012, the year of desserts and dinner parties!

So my New Year's resolutions run as follows:

1) Make more desserts

2) Drink more dessert wine (maybe that should be enjoy more..?)

3) Have more dinner parties

4) Drink less during the week

5) Get my 5km time to sub 30 mins

6) Do a Triathlon!

So you can see a couple of running themes - the first, to do with cooking and entertaining, and then the second to do with not getting fat whilst doing all that entertaining lol!

Why making more desserts - well actually this resolution could read 'Make desserts, don't buy them or get people to bring them' as that's generally where I get to at dinner parties, general parties or generic events.

I'm not a good finisher of anything and after planning savoury snacks and meals, cooking them and washing up, I can't face additional cooking. Now thinking about it maybe I'm just not a good planner as most desserts (as I'm learning!) require precise planning - the quantity of ingredients is key, especially when baking, and a lot need to be made ahead to set etc

So perhaps I'm not a great planner (or finisher?? hmm maybe being too drunk when hosting a party could be blamed for that - resolution 2 won't help this then!), anyway I've realised that my usual style of chucking what I've got in the pot/tray doesn't work with desserts and baking, and sometimes it doesn't work with savoury stuff either lol!

To keep me from ballooning over the course of attempting resolutions 1 & 2 the dinner party is a necessity - this allows to me to cook a 3 course meal and then not be eating the same food for a week - always a plus as otherwise I'll be throwing it out when I get bored....

Resolution 4 to drink less in the week is mainly as I've come to realise I can't bounce back from mid week hangovers anymore - work is just hell, so why do it?!! Think this will take a lot more practise and for New Zealand wine tastings to be scheduled on weekends rather than Tuesday nights before I can master this one - but its a good aim!

Which brings me to the 'active' resolutions, 4 &5 - I intend to get more into my running in 2012 seeing as I seem to have made progress on my knee injury from last autumn. So aiming to get my speed up, rather than endurance, but also to incorporate a range of disciplines such as cycling and swimming for an all over body work out.

Can't be bad that this extra exercise will allow me to sample my desserts!

So to look forward to from January 2012 I have:

Chocolate Torte (flourless chocolate cake from Gordon Ramsey)

Chocolate Mousse

Turkish Delight jellies

And Macaroon Madness!

The Camden Road Cook x