Christmas is Gyoza Season

Gyoza dumplings are some of my favourite nibbly things out there. They cost a bomb to eat in restaurants and let’s face it, the North is hardly blessed with places to eat them, unless you fancy braving Yo!Sushi and its rotating belt of dubiously warm plates. However, they cost next to nothing to make at home; all you need is to source the wrappers from a Chinese supermarket and you’re set. I made these for our traditional Christmas Eve buffet, which is a little nibbly things dream, peppered with dozens of amuses bouches that I spent all day happily preparing.

Christmas Eve Buffet!

It’s finally here! A day well spent in the kitchen preparing my favourite meal of the year. Tonight’s selection includes homemade prawn gyoza, parma ham, goat’s cheese and fig bundles, ham cooked in coca-cola with a treacle and brown sugar glaze, balsamic vinaigrette salad, crudités, potato salad and many more! Happy Christmas!

Rough Puff Sausage Rolls

One thing that I love about the patisserie course is learning new skills. I thought I was pretty clued-up before but there are always things to learn and a few weeks ago it was puff pastry. Practicing pastry so often doesn’t come cheap though and using butter actually makes the product unstable, as it has such a low melting point. Although we were all shocked on our first day to see Fabrice advocate the use of pastry margarine in lieu of butter, when it comes to rough puff, I’m now a convert.

Windfall Plum Tart

Now, though there may be a photo of a beautiful plum tart here, this article is really to showcase a trade secret I learnt on the first day of my part-time Patisserie course in Leeds (more posts on that to follow!). And that trade secret is a little thing called almond cream. In my previous ignorance, I’ve called almond cream a frangipane but was pulled up pretty quick on this by my tutor Fabrice, who sighed very loudly when I described the recipe in front of us as such. Apparently, a frangipane has twenty per cent crème patissière stirred into it. This means that every recipe I’ve made in the past that’s called its filling a frangipane has been downright lying to me. The cheek! Once I’d overcome this revelation, in class we set about making the stuff. And boy is it good. Soft, sweet, moist and dense. What’s not to like?

The Scilly Isles: Adam’s Fish and Chips

In my eyes, there can be no better holiday destination than the Scilly Isles. To celebrate finishing the MA and the hand-in of the dissertation, Roger and I travelled by taxi, train, ferry and then by smaller boat to spend a few weeks on our favourite islands off the coast of Cornwall. A weird coincidence with Roger is that when we first started going out, he once wistfully described a book he used to read as a child that had a tiny little picture of Tresco Island in it, and told me that he’d dreamed his whole life about going there one day. This heart-rending tale set me off on an epic account of family holidays and idyllic childhood memories, which made him rather jealous (most things do), but it also drove my mum to the internet, where she immediately sourced a free space on Bryher campsite for two weeks for me and Roger to live out his dream. And so a summer holiday tradition was born.

Plum-go Chutney

Sorry if this is a boring photo, but you can't really sex up chutney.

It’s no secret that I love fruit straight from the tree at harvest time, but when I got back from the Scilly Isles and took the train home, our neighbour Ken gave us a BUCKET of plums and I began to feel pretty scared that they might go off if I didn’t deal with them quickly enough. The end result was that I embarked on a large-scale operation of chutney and cake making. We had crumbles coming out of our ears and compotes filling up the freezer, not to mention sauces and pickles taking up every empty jar.

After I’d made an old favourite (Nigella’s Chinese-style plum dipping sauce), I began to consider the other options that were open to me. Having looked up a few recipes online, I decided to make a few jars of mango chutney: with plums. Hence “Plum-go” chutney. Basically, all of the spices are the same as those that you’d find in a mango chutney and it does taste very similar. It’s a good idea if you’ve got a glut of fruit to use up, rather than shelling out for precious mangoes!

It’s finished! Off to the Scilly Isles to celebrate!

Dissertation strikes again...

This dissertation is getting hectic now. One month until the big hand-in and I’m getting pretty wound up, constantly re-writing drafts! My letters from America have finally arrived, so I need to get analysing them. Summer is lovely, from what I’ve seen looking out of the window. Apart from a few epic barbeques, no food had been cooked but many crisps and snacks have been eaten. I’m going to take a little break for a month until everything’s blown over. Until then, this is what I’ll be up to…

Macaroons

When the going gets tough, I make macaroons. Now, in breaks from the dissertation madness, recently I’ve been trying out with great success the Ladurée-type macaroons that they sell everywhere now for a pound a go. Let me tell you- they are so easy to make. I made some tiramisu ones, and then some pistachio. But after six or seven, I did actually get a bit sick of eating them, so offloaded them onto friends and family. What I class a REAL macaroon are these ones here. I could make them in my sleep and it’s the go-to recipe for a leftover egg white.

Bagels

In a moment of madness, I decided to volunteer in a flour mill at York’s Castle Museum. Wild at the thought of working in a mill, I underestimated how very cold it was in there and how little time I actually had to work in the place. Plus, little gripe here: it’s a crime that museum funding is so low that they have to rely on volunteers to run things. As a student, I’m not ashamed to admit I really did need money. I am ashamed, however, to admit that as a result of the wallet, I had to give up volunteering before I’d even begun! One good thing that came out of this process was that the thought of being able to work in a “demonstration bread kitchen” got me so excited, that I quickly whipped up some bagels to give to people in charge to land me the job. Which would have worked, if anyone cared. Volunteers just need to turn up, they don’t need to bring bribery bagels, do they? I ate them myself and gave some to my neighbour, Maria.

A quick trip to Holland

Dissertation time has begun at last! And I’m feeling it, rushing off to archives across the country (well, Liverpool and Manchester). It’s an excellent experience but so exhausting! I feel like I’m cramming the history of the world in my head. But it’s just cotton brokers. And man, they are cool. But enough about that. I went to Amsterdam with Roger for a few days to visit our friend Lawrence, who’s teaching children how to be excellent to one another. He lives outside of the city, in a little town called s-Hertogenbosch, which was like a continental version of York! A very cute little place, with a bustling town centre market and a lovely little Cathedral.

Hungarian Smoked Cheese Gourgères.

As well as the little wooden puli dog that I ADORE, one of the things I brought back with me from Hungary was a few packets of smoked cheese called Karavan. Reka’s mum, on our arrival at the flat had laid out a magnificent spread of meats, cheeses and salads but the clear favourite was a pyramid of cheesy puffs. We went wild for them and crammed them in pretty much every minute we were awake until sadly, we scoffed them all.

Café Gerbeaud in Budapest, Hungary

With much excitement during a spare few days of Easter holiday essay hell, me and three of my MA girlies set off to Hungary, to stay in Reka’s fab little apartment in the heart of Budapest. Although I was very excited and had been looking forward to the break for a good long while, I’m sorry to say that pretty instantly homesickness set in! How annoying! Basically, the result ended in me angrily huffing and puffing my way around Budapest zoo with the others before running out of the lion enclosure to put credit on my phone so I could text my mum and Roger. Zoos and I don’t get on to begin with, so it was never a good idea. The bear made me especially sad. But I wasn’t always homesick; once I’d got that credit on my phone I was ok. As long as I have some form of link to Roger and my mum, I think I’ll survive. Even a coconut phone or frequent messages in bottles would have sorted me out.

My lazy focaccia

I call this recipe a lazy one because I feel like I’m betraying some cook’s oath by using a bread maker. It makes me embarrassed when people ask “did you make this from scratch?” because I don’t feel like I have done. Just in the same way that I feel guilty when people praise a meal I’ve made from a recipe. It’s not like I did any work, I just followed instructions. You couldn’t boast you made a table “from scratch” if you picked up a flat pack from Ikea. I don’t really think cooking is that mechanical a process, but whenever I see a chef on TV making a cake in a mixer, rather than with a spoon, I can’t help but think they’re missing the point. Anyway, the reason I use a bread maker? Borderline O.C.D. dad. If I’m seen to be kneading dough on a worktop, with flour going everywhere, my dad freaks out. So out comes my robot helper, and the only mess is a pan to wash.

Edinburgh- and Dundee Lemon Sole

I love Edinburgh, and the thought of getting on the train and chugging up there once a year is enough to keep me going when things get tough. Taking a few days off from the MA, Roger and I packed our bags for a few days of relaxation: but more importantly, food. We’re always the first to hit the Steak and Mussels place at the bottom of the Grassmarket, and had an excellent last night meal there comprising of steak for Roger and oysters, followed by cream, bacon and whisky mussels for me. Scrum-o.

Elephant Garlic

Now, according to the label, this beast is supposed to taste delicate, more like leek than garlic. And it only takes an hour to cook. Well mine didn’t, on both counts. Even I couldn’t eat this simply “spread on toast”. But never mind, I gave it another blast in the oven, which gave me some more time to think what the hell to do with it. In an ideal world, the garlic would have been great in a creamy almond and orange soup, but I don’t think my family could stomach that, particularly on the only warm weekend we had all summer. But this bulb goes to show that cooking disasters can often turn into something delicious. So here’s what I did with mine.

Isle of Wight- The Garlic Farm

Here’s the deal: the MA is extremely time consuming. I’m having to read about 12 articles per seminar a week, which doesn’t sound like much but if you actually try to take everything in and make notes and all that jazz like I’ve been doing, it’s a long process. With PhD applications in and amongst everything else, I’m posting up two articles that I wrote last summer after I graduated. Those days were so warm and sunny, it’s nice to remember a bit of sunshine...

If Julie Andrews was forced to sing a song about my favourite things, I think she’d have a hard time. Garlic, cream and olive oil don’t rhyme very well. Plus they’re a cholesterol nightmare, but who cares? The magic properties of garlic are supposed to help with that.

My friend Lawrence lives on the Isle of Wight. With University finished and an expanse of a holiday before us, not to mention Lawrence dying of boredom on the Island, a road trip was in order. Cue a four-hour train journey to the sunniest depths of Warwickshire, where Roger and I drop in on Maddie and her equally mad family.  After meeting her lovely little stroke-riddled pooch, Buddy, Maddie then gave us a tour of her collection of grumpy horses before we finally met Grace, a big-eyed tubby sheep, blissfully remaining under the delusion that she’s a dog. After stopping to say hello, she followed us around the field, prompting us to continue scratching her big curly butt with a nudge using the full force of her big, warm sheepy body.