The Sneaky Magpie

Tag Archives: Woody Allen

8 February, 2010

Weekend joys

This weekend was great. Having a friend for breakfast on Saturday morning made me clean my house and do grocery shopping early. After my friend was gone about midday I was left with a tidy house, full fridge and a whole weekend to enjoy myself without any chores.

I did a small trip to one of my favorite cooking and baking shops in London – La Cuisiniere. Unfortunately they didn’t have the things I needed and as I was in the area I popped to the local charity shop instead. I always head for the book section, they sell paperbacks for 50 pence and I usually find some of the classics I am meaning to read. This week I got:

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, a novel I wanted to read for some time as I am a huge Bronte sisters fan

The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith which I never heard of before but it looks very interesting and funny

Hotel Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones – I though Fashion Babylon was not that silly after all, the plot is very basic but there is a lot of little insights of how the industry really works, I hope to fish out those bits from this book about hotels, and at 50 pence it can go back to the shop anyway. I thought it was serendipity having just finished her other book.

Even though I haven’t bought any bake ware I did manage to make some tarts. I hate making pastry but I like the idea of pretty tarts. So I decided to face my demon and make some. I figured the only way to learn how to make pastry is to do it frequently. Sweet pastry is way easier to make than savoury one, though.

The treats this week were hazelnut tarts from Skye’s recipe and super rich chocolate tarts from Jamie’s recipe. The hazelnut filling is like hazelnut frangipane, delicious with a hint of lemon rind. I added one whisked egg white unlike Skye, I can never stick to a recipe!

I also learned that I should trim the pastry before baking for a neat look, doing so after it’s baked ended up in a disaster, the pastry just chipped and large chunks fell off.

I popped to the Battersea car boot sale and got some granny cups, love them!

Watched Milk at last and thought it was fantastic.

Also watched Everyone says I love you and thought it was not that fantastic, I haven’t been lucky with Woody Allen lately.

I also guest blogged about my olfactory adventures on Signature Scent which was fun.

I must say it felt a little bit like spring on Saturday but I don’t want to get too excited as it’s not even the middle of February. Felt tempted to buy some daffodils but restrained myself and settled for small pink carnations, I should enjoy spring when it comes!

14 September, 2009

Cooking day

I have been very busy at work and all I wanted to do this weekend was to chill out and cook.

On Sunday I baked marble cake….

…followed by 2 hours of making dumplings. People always ask me why don’t I cook Polish dishes but they are so time consuming that I hardly ever have the time.

So the dumpling (pierogi) epic started with Sunday morning lecture of Chekhov’s stories. I started to crave Russian style dumplings, these are filled with quark, boiled potatoe and fried onion mixture.

I prepared the filling, seasoned it and put it away in the fridge.

The hard part is preparing the dough, it is tough, you mix flour with a pinch of salt, very little water and some egg (1 egg per 1kg of flour but it is optional). You kneed the dough till it’s smooth and elastic and leave it to rest for 30 min.

Next step is to roll it out thinly and cut out round shapes. Put a little bit of filling in the middle, fold it and seal it – my technique is to press it with a fork.

Throw the dumplings into a large pan of boiling water and cook for a couple of minutes after they come up to the surface. Now you can serve these just cooked with fried onions in olive oil and butter or the decadent way – in cream. Or you can fry them with onions and serve them with cream, I actually settled for yogurt.