Archive | October, 2010
31 October, 2010 

Nigel’s hazelnut and chocolate cake

I have lots and lots of bookmarks for recipes that I want to try, some of them become regular dishes, some of them are only tried once and forgotten.

Nigel Slater’s hazelnut and chocolate cake will definitely remain one of my favorites, it is delicious, looks impressive and it is very easy to make.

I managed to bake it before going to the house, it’s that easy.

Hazelnut and chocolate cake recipe:

250g butter

250g sugar

75g hazelnuts, roasted, skins removed and ground

120g dark chocolate

4 large eggs

125g self raising flour

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

4 tsp esspresso

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and prepare a round baking form by buttering it inside.

Cream butter and sugar, add the eggs one by one. Add half of the flour and half of the nuts, mix it briefly. Add the rest of the flour and hazelnuts, cinnamon, chopped chocolate and espresso and mix together. Bake for 45min or until the knife comes out moist but clean.

Icing:

125g butter

250g chocolate

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Melt the chocolate gently in a water bath, take off the heat, add the butter and stir it in until it’s smooth, add the cinnamon and put aside to cool and thicken.

Once the cake has been baked and cooled, decorate with the icing and roasted hazelnuts.

A perfect celebration cake, happy birthday hubby!

27 October, 2010 

Nesting

I get a weekly letter from a pregnancy website, last week I was informed that I will feel the urge to nest which is pretty fortunate since we got keys to our new abode and there is so much to do!

All my weekends and a couple of weeks of holidays will be spent on all sort of house repairs, meeting builders, choosing tiles, paint, taps etc.

Last weekend was fairly productive, the house doesn’t have central heating so the only way to keep warm was  being active. I have stripped the wallpaper in the living room, baby room, on the staircase and half of the bedroom while hubby dismantled a wall of wardrobes and started a number of other things.

Old wallpaper.

Old wardrobes.

Work in progress plus a bonus topaz fire place we discovered. This is staying for sure.

As we took a break the sun started to set and the light in the bedroom was magnificent.

There is a number of cool lamp shades in the house.

Some amazing kitchen cupboards that will be painted, the kitchen itself is a great space and it will look amazing.

The bathroom is Art Deco and we planned on a slight update but after looking at it for a while we decided it is a bit mad and not in such a great condition so we will change it. It would be impossible to install a shower and btw I refuse to own a house with separate taps. We will however try not to damage it and perhaps resell it.

The list of things to do is endless. And there is the packing of our belongings too, a box a day which so far has been successful, selling stuff on ebay, buying tools and building materials.

Must stay focused, this weekend we need to achieve:

meeting 2 builders and a plumber

stripping the rest of wallpaper in the bedroom and kitchen

removing the rest of the bedroom wardrobes

removing a corner cupboard from the kitchen and a crazy concrete shelf inside of it!

starting on the first coat for all the woodwork if possible

Hopefully the central heating, plumbing, electrics and plastering can be done next week by professionals. Watch this space for progress updates.

I have to plan meals very carefully too, it’s so easy just to have a take away but I don’t want to waste all the fruit and veg from Riverford so all kind of oven based dishes and stews are being prepared in advance. On top of that I am slowly but surely emptying my freezer and cupboards, the less we have to take with us the better.

The baby room would be the main focus for most but at the moment I only have a vague idea in my head and no time to think about it in detail. Besides the baby will be sleeping in our bedroom for some time so no rush there!

25 October, 2010 

I like receiving mail

Especially if it’s a package.

The lovely Marta from stuffedmice was sharing tea with few bloggers and I am one of the lucky three!

The tea came nicely wrapped.

To my delight it was rooibos chai tea! I don’t drink black or fruit tea and I am slightly bored of herbal teas so chai tea with a bit of soya milk and a dollop of honey is my latest favorite drink.

Thank you Marta, this will definitely keep me warm in my new heatingless house.

21 October, 2010 

Colors of the season

A couple of weeks ago we went to see our new house, on the way back we decided to take a stroll through Wimbledon Common, the weather was warm and sunny, the leaves just started to turn golden and we spotted these pretty guys:

London is absolutely freezing at the moment, gloves, scarves and woolly socks came out of the wardrobes, Clapham Common was covered with a film of frost, sun is shining making it look so pretty. But is it cold and that calls for some comfort food. Riverford had a special offer on squash boxes. They promised 3 types but I found 4 in mine.

I also got a little guide of what they are, to be perfectly honest I could only tell the butternut squash for sure, the orange ones I would just call pumpkins but they surely have a better name!

So apart from my butternut squash I got green kabacha, crown prince squash and I am not sure whether it is sugar pumpkin or red kabacha.

My usual squash repertoire is pumpkin soup, squash risotto or Indian curry, I have made pumpkin pie before and might do it again. But this amount calls for more exciting recipes so I scanned the web for some inspiration and here is what I found:

olive oil pumpkin bread, squash and hazelnut lasagne (I used to have a recipe for a squash lasagne which is delicious but can’t find it) and winter squash galette from A Chow Life

Smitten Kitchen has got lots of delicious sounding dishes like pumpkin muffins (handy when the new house repairs start), pumpkin waffles (just need the waffle maker), warm salad – this actually inspired me to make a roasted squash and hazelnut salad, acorn squash pizza looks very appetising too

Hugh’s chicken and pumpkin roast is a perfect winter dinner

Jamie’s laksa which I have tried last year, pure bliss

squash tart from Le Tartine Gourmande

Do you have any exciting squash recipes?

20 October, 2010 

Best Indian in town?

Going through Tooting is like going through a different part of the world, the whole high street is peppered with Indian restaurants and supermarkets, small grocery shops, sari shops etc. I have been meaning to go out there for a very long time but only managed to do some food shopping. Now that I am moving away from this area I finally got a chance to go, not out of my own initiative, oh no! A friend of mine suggested to go to Kastoori, a vegetarian restaurant, apparently the best in Europe.

So off we went.

The restaurant looks like pretty much any other Indian place: cheesy decor, yellow table cloths, regional artwork. The menu though is like nothing I have seen before. You will not see korma or tikka dishes at all. Instead they have an amazing selection of authentic dishes that people in India actually eat. There is also a selection of African inspired dishes – the Thanki family who owns the place lived there for several years and hence the influence.

We ordered a selection of dishes, most of them we never heard of before and boy, were they good! Everything is cooked from fresh ingredients and is well spiced with different mixes, you can really taste the difference. The dishes were subtle, the sauces had the right amount of a kick and nothing was greasy, you could not spot a drop of ghee anywhere making it all beyond delicious.

We had a selection of puris to start with, one of them was described as a taste bomb, I could not give it any better description. We also had masala kachori, heavenly cinnamon balls with a number of sauces.

The main courses were as good but the real stars of the show were spinach with panir, brown chickpea curry and dosa – a large crispy pancake stuffed with potato mixture and served with coconut sauce. An utter bliss. And all of it plus more for less than £20 per person.

No pictures unfortunately, when pregnant woman needs to eat there are no such distractions.

I am sad I have never visited more Tooting restaurants but apparently near-ish my new house there is a massive Korean community and I will not make the same mistake again.

18 October, 2010 

Secret Garden

A brief house update. We are nearly there, hopefully we will get the keys on Friday. I am so excited!

In the meantime I would like to share some pictures of our garden which has got a huge apple tree in the middle. The tree needs to be ‘fixed’ because it doesn’t produce much fruit but once it does we will be in apple heaven. And it’s perfect for a swing too. On the right side there is a very generous strip of future veg beds. I am writing a list of things to plant. There will be flowers too and bushes of gooseberries and currants. Brambles are already there, I might add raspberries too. Peonies are high on my flower list. And all the herbs I can grow!

What makes the garden really special is a hidden gate leading right onto Wimbledon Common, isn’t this wonderful?

Fingers and toes crossed it all goes through!

8 October, 2010 

What have I (not) managed to acheive in my week off

The cold dragged on and on and turned into a chest infection so most of my plans for the week off went out of the window. I was tired and to keep the bub happy I wasn’t allowed to take any medicine, not even cough syrup!

- I sold our glass table on ebay which means the desk is now our table till we find a new one

- I am enjoying Justine Picardie’s Coco Chanel biography, it is a very informative, well researched and written book

- I have iron deficiency so I have to go heavy on red meat and broccoli, I am fan of neither. I have gone through few recipe books and picked some exciting looking stews and roasts, beef ragu for dinner tonight

- I am craving sweets, I could just eat ice cream and chocolate but that would be silly. Instead I reminded myself of semolina, I used to eat a lot of it as a child, this time the recipe is slightly adjusted, I make it with soya milk and water with addition of vanilla beans and honey. For the topping I stewed white peaches with a bit of sugar and vanilla bean. Delicious!

- I managed to spend proper quality time with few of my friends, a huge bonus!

- went to see Muybridge at Tate Modern which is a very good exhibition, history of photography fascinates me and Muybridge was a big part of it, more of a scientist and explorer than an artist. Besides, he was a rather interesting person, he shot his wife’s lover and got acquitted of the murder, apparently back in the days this was considered a perfectly reasonable behavior.

- watched another episode of Nigella Kitchen and now she is just irritating me, what she prepares is one step up from student food, I do get amused by her fake friends though!

- I finished a baby jumper but it came out so wonky hubby and I had a good laugh about it. I need to redo it else my baby will look like a right old hippie.

- this is the bump week 28, I can’t believe I am in my last trimester. the baby likes all sort of classical music especially clavichord, he goes crazy when I play tunes from Barry Lyndon, in particular Funeral of Queen Mary

- I didn’t go to all the other exhibitions I was planning to go to, I missed Exposed altogether (I did manage to catch Sargent on its last day though)

- I didn’t go to the cinema once, this is a bummer, I love going to the cinema in the afternoon

- I didn’t go to First Thursday

I just hate being sick.

7 October, 2010 

Dutch apple pie

There is an apple tree in our communal garden, the tree is full of fruit this year and nobody seems to be bothered to pick it up. Ripe and rotten apples keep dropping to the ground and every now and then I hear a thump.

A friend was visiting and we decided to go and save some of the apples. We shook the tree and came home with a decent amount which we split between each other. As the apples were bashed I needed to cook them pretty fast so the following day with another friend we made an apple pie. Both of us used to live in Amsterdam and apple pie with whipped cream (or slagroom) is served in every brown cafe. The Dutch definitely know how to make it well spicing it with cinnamon and adding generous amounts of raising and sometimes nuts. If you do go to Amsterdam the best place to get the pie is in Noordenmarkt, never remembered the name of the cafe* but you will see people sitting outside because the place is always full, eating their delicious treat. *EDIT It’s Cafe Winkel.

Here is my recipe:

300g flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

160g sugar

200g butter

1 egg

1kg apples peeled and chopped/sliced

50g sugar

1 tbsp cinnamon

100g raising soaked in brandy

Optional: pistachios or hazelnuts

Heat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Combine all the dry ingredients, add butter and mix it till it resembles breadcrumbs. Add most of the egg, combine all the components till they form a ball. Remove a little bit of the pastry and put it into the fridge, this will be used for the topping.

Butter the baking tin, fill the bottom and the edges with the pastry. In a separate bowl combine the apples, drained raisins, sugar and cinnamon, put it all into the tin. With the remaining chilled pastry create strips and place them on top of the apples creating a check. Glaze with the leftover egg. Bake for 1.5-2h. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Enjoy!

2 October, 2010 

Dripping

It’s not only the sky that’s dripping with water, it’s also my nose. Apart from my daily vitamins I am not allowed to have any other medicine so my only hope is in rose hip tea, fresh ginger and lemon tea and inhalations. And lots of liquid of course. I stayed home yesterday which was a good decision as I feel much better today and I am desperate to get better for next week when I will be off.

Colds can be very annoying but there is this tiny bit of energy left so I had to come up with things to keep me company in between naps.

I quickly tidied the house while hubby was getting me all the essentials from the supermarket before going to work, there is nothing more depressing than being ill in a messy space and with an empty fridge. I used up all my energy by 9.00 am and retired to bed.

I finished Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and I must say that half way through I started to properly enjoy it, I think the reason I got bored with it at the beginning is that it was just like the film which I remember so vividly but after a while there are differences and the book is much better than the film.

I tried to knit but I messed up a row really badly and in a desperate attempt to save it it went from bad to worse. I undid it all.

I thought I will watch Iplayer instead. Masterchef Professionals is back which entertained me for a while. I also watched Nigella Kitchen and even though I like to watch it I don’t consider her a good cook. In the whole program there was one recipe that involved any cooking, the rest was just assembling dishes. The dish that I think is perfect for my cold and the cold weather in general is her mum’s ‘praised’ chicken which is bubbling in a pot as we speak. You can find the recipe here. Fingers crossed that will heal me fast.

On a bright side we have exchanged which means we will be moving to our new abode end of November, just in time for the baby’s arrival.