#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

#20 - Ways to cook salmon no. 2

So what is an easy way to cook succulent salmon? Answer - marinated stir fry! So this is what I did for my friend T coming over for dinner.

This time my salmon recipe did not go wrong lol!

I marinated the salmon fillets in an oriental mix of light soy sauce, thai fish sauce, chili oil, seasame oil and with fresh chillies, lemongrass and garlic:

A stir fry veg pack from Sainsburys was sliced and diced for the stir fry:


Then the salmon was grilled whilst the veggies were stir fried with the rest of the marinade from the salmon and served up together - too yummy to stop and take a picture I'm afraid!

For a palate cleansing desert and to use up a lot of blood oranges (also to avoid chocolate as this was lent time) I made a orange 'marinaded' desert:

The oranges were soaked in Grand Marnier and should have been served with a little cream, but were perfect with out = kinda like a lumpy cocktail! *hic*

The Camden Road Cook

#19 - What to do with lots of brown bananas....

Make banana cake!!

J had a tonne (not literally!) of bananas going brown, I had seen a recipe for brown banana cake on telly (BBC Nigel Slater) - so it was game on..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/black_banana_cake_52982

First we had to break up the chocolate

The Camden Road Cook does not own a rolling pin, however this is substituted by one of the numerous bottles of wine hanging around to good effect:

Apart from a vast number of bananas, chocolate, & nuts the recipe required a lot of butter and some flour type ingredients

Batter was tasty - and here it is in the tin ready to go in the oven

And after coming out of the oven!

Ummm tasting time!!

Seeing as we had a LOT of bananas we ended up with 2 cakes and enough to feed all our friends and colleagues (but I resisted sending cake abroad!)

The Camden Road Cook

#18 - Chocolate cake/mess?

So my lovely friend T signed me up to a subscription for Oive magazine for my birthday this month - this is us celebrating the Royal Wedding in style (well champagne and PJ's!)

Having seen the front of the current magazine showing a gorgeous chocolate cake my flatmate J suggested this would be a good recipe to try out for Royal Wedding day - this is what I was trying to recreate:

ummm - yummy!

Suffice to say mine didn't *quite* turn out like that!:

The chocolate ganache icing just wouldn't set - so mine was more a chocolate soup with a rather large crouton in the middle.... however as you can tell from the picture, this didn't stop people from eating it and given the large quantity of sauce, the overall verdict?:

Fudgy 'death by chocolate'...

Next time its suggested to use less cream to allow the ganache to set quicker - will let you know what the outcome is when that happens!

The recipe if you are interested in trying it out for yourself can be found here:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1190635/bestever-chocolate-layer-cake

The Camden Road Cook

#17 Pancake day!

So for pancake day this year we had an extravaganza!!

Starting out with the basic pancake - read crepe - recipe by Delia:

2 eggs
110g plain flour
pinch of salt
200ml milk mixed with 75ml water
2 tbs melted butter

Sieve the flour & salt into a large mixing bowl, then make a well in the centre and break the eggs into it.

whisk the eggs - with a fork or electric whisk if you have it - incorporating the flour from around the eggs bit by bit.

then add small quantities of the milk/water mix gradually - ignore any lumps becuase they'll disappear

the batter should end up smooth with the consistency of thin cream

when you are ready to cook the pancakes add the 2 tbs melted butter into the batter and stir in

melt a small amount of butter around the pan & tip excess out - next get the pan really hot and then turn down to medium - pour in about 2 tbs batter (you'll need to test for the optium amount for your pan - yum!), and swirl around until the pan is evenly coated with batter

cook for about 1/2 minute and then loosen from the plan and get ready to flip!

The result:

Savoury fillings came first:

A ham, mushroom, garlic, cream and parsleymix:
Et volia:-

Sweet fillings:

Banoffee pie! Bananas, duche de leche (sp?) and the ultimate base - crumbled oreo cookies:


All rolled up ready to devour!

Enjoy!

The Camden Road Cook

#16 - Exploding lentils! (way to cook salmon no1)

So whilst trying to create a short cut for dinner tonight I managed to explode a pack of ready made lentils all over my clean microwave.....





I'm sure I followed the heating instructions ok!





Anyway tonight's dinner was grilled salmon with lemon juice and chilli flakes, with ready made puy lentils (tomato & basil flavour - can be found in Waitrose).





To tart the lentils up, especially after losing some of the pack by *wallpapering* the microwave, I fried some sliced red peppers and mushrooms in olive oil and added chopped parsley et voila:




The Camden Road Cook