FIESTA FOR TIFF & NOAH

It was finally time to celebrate their engagement with the family.  Chelsey planed a really fun Fiesta on the beach. Dave was chief chef, of course and made delicious  pork tacos, the best I have eaten by far.  The cake was my domain and keeping in the spirit of the evening I decided on a Tres Leches cake. I had made one before and it was a disaster. I occasionally pick up Fine Cooking magazine, as luck would have it I bought the current issue as my plane reading en route to Cannes and it featured a Tres Leches recipe. I know their recipes work so without a practice run I decided to go for it. Well I think my only mistake was not making 2! This is a really easy cake to bake and is perfect for entertaining as it is excellent baked the day before you need it, all you need to do on the day is add the whipped cream and some garnish, I used chocolate, was supposed to be curls, clearly need to work on that!

DINNER FOR THE EXTENDED FAMILY

The Szlams really enjoy Easter with the CT family, luckily for us! They spent a week with us and a little tradition has started that Dave cooks supper one night, with me as sous chef and voyeur.  Regular readers will laugh, he decided to do chicken!

OK, I'll grant you that it does not look like any chicken I have ever served up, but it really has a lot to do with the presentation.  The tower is make up of:
Sauted and roasted slices of potato.
Sauted and roasted chicken thighs in a lemon and thyme butter.
Garnish is sauted scallions and mushrooms.
The piece de la resistance was the sauce, Pea and spinach and here is the recipe:

Blanche half a bag of baby spinach. Remove to an ice bath and reserve the water.  Once cooled remove the spinach and squeeze out as much water as possible.  saute/sweat a couple of cloves of chopped garlic in a splash of olive oil, then add about 3 inch part of the middle of the scallions. Add the liquid from the spinach and bring to a boil.  Put about half a pound of peas in a blender add the garlic/scallion water til it just covers peas and blend til smooth.  Add the spinach and blend again.  Put into small saucepan to reheat before serving, season to taste and add at least 2 TBSPS of butter.

I did this a couple of weeks later with salmon, it was delicious and looked wonderful of course, the pink fish with the bright green sauce - sadly didn't photograph it - next time!

PIE DAY!

The Beauty team at work have a tradition of an annual pie day.  I think it is one of the Creative Director's birthday, and she is a pie lover.  The deal is you sign up to provide your pie at a certain time then you can partake with other contributions.  I would have to say that the interpretation of 'pie' was pretty loose.  I was a little concerned about bringing a tart but I had no need to worry, there were cakes, quiches and a really interesting one to start the day, bacon and corn pie!  It was not a quiche as you might have guessed, but really seemed like a pastry sheet scattered with bacon, corn and some red onion, I think.  My offering was the raspberry tart, thanks to Amy for the pic, and it was pretty well received. I  posted this tart some time ago but have been wanting to make it again, and have still not copied the recipe as a link.  PLEASE Cooks Illustrated, make your recipes available for all!

CHICKEN TAGINE

The current request from Alan is to cook something at the weekend that will keep well for at least one more meal during the week, probably by about Thursday.  Found this in my clippings from NYT and it checked all the boxes, new and interesting for me to try as well as re-heatable! CHICKEN TAGINE WITH EGGPLANT AND OLIVES.  I have not eating Tagine often but always really enjoyed it when I have so pretty keen to try this.
Verdict was pretty good, Alan and I enjoyed, Joseph not so much. I thought the flavours were excellent and I could have done with a bit more juices, might increase the chicken stock next time I do this.
Some notes - I clearly do not have a Tagine, I cooked it in a deep frying pan with a lid and finished it in the oven for the final 40 minutes at 350 degrees.  I will definitely do this again, suppose when Joseph is not home for dinner!

Dessert for my Valentines!

We have never enjoyed going out for dinner on Valentine's night - just as well at the moment! Alan would cook the 3 of us something delicious and, after spotting this recipe, I offered to do dessert knowing I could pull this off after coming home from work.
DARK CHOCOLATE CHERRY GANACHE BARS

This is really chocolate shortbread with some wonderful chocolate frosting.  I made the shortbread part on the Sunday before the big day and of course I did not follow the recipe exactly.  The Cherry part is a couple of tablespoons of jam which goes between the base and the chocolate. I had some Bonne Maman raspberry preserves and decided to use that.  For the liquor I used that vintage Remy Martin that I have mentioned before, always a treat!  I melted the chocolate in the microwave, as opposed to stovetop, much easier as you only use one dish, rather than the heatproof bowl over a saucepan of water.  I simply whipped in the cream (which was slightly warmed) and then the cognac once the chocolate was melted.  As I did this just before we ate, I did not have time to put in fridge to chill until firm.  When we ate it the top was the consistency of frosting and it was really delicious! I did put the leftovers in the fridge and tasted it the next night (well, I had to, for research!) and it was also pretty good once the chocolate had firmed up but I must say I preferred it the way we had it freshly made. This will definitely go in the 'do this again' pile of recipes. Oh, and no prizes for guessing where the roses in the background came from!

DUCK BREASTS FOR DINNER

I love duck breasts, although I do not have them that often.  Spotted this recipe in NYTimes a few weeks ago and have been waiting for the right moment to cook them. Our supermarket doesn't always have them either but I saw them there last weekend and the plan stated taking shape!
January is a quiet month for us usually, have been doing a no alcohol month for a few years now and that goes along perfectly with catching up on movies prior to the Oscars. We had a DVD to watch last night, The Ides of March, which was enjoyable, almost as much as the duck! Here is the recipe link., Peppered Duck Breast with Red Wine Sauce

Few notes: They were not Muscovy duck breasts which I don't think mattered at all except mine weighed closer to half a pound rather than a pound.  I did one each which was really a bit too much but no-one was looking!! I still used the same timings and they were done exactly as I like them, I did the second side for 5 minutes, which was supposed to be fore medium-rare.
The sauce was exceptional and easy.  This would be a great dish for entertaining as you can do the sauce ahead of time.  And yes, it was very tempting to drink a glass of the red wine I opened for the sauce but I managed not to!

MOM, THIS COULD BE BEST BIRTHDAY CAKE YET....

Most of my friends know that I always do a chocolate cake for Joseph's birthday. For years I had been cheating and using a Duncan Hines mix!!!!! Shocker, I know.  It all started when I asked a friend and chef for a good chocolate cake recipe when Joseph was around 4, as I was finding that my English recipes didn't seem to work so well here, and truthfully, I hadn't baked too many chocolate cakes. The friend knew it was for a 4 year old's birthday party and said I was crazy to bother to bake one from scratch, and so the cake from a mix thing started.  I did always make my own Butter icing/frosting, honest!  A year ago I made a wonderful cake, recipe from Rosalind,  who had brought it to my birthday party earlier in the year. (I was sure I had posted it but it seems not!)  This cake was a labour of love for sure, but well worth it in my opinion, here is a pic, looks pretty similar, suppose it is my frosting style but it was much bigger and it was really delicious!

So, as the birthday drew nigh I asked Joseph if he would like me to repeat the cake this year and he said: 'No, let's go back to the one you used to make',  so disappointing, I LOVED last year's cake.  However, I really wanted to improve on the packet mix cake and looked for a recipe for traditional chocolate cake.  Turned to Cooks Illustrated, of course and there found an 'Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake' recipe that looked about right to me.  As I have said before, I cannot post a link, you need to subscribe to CI, most annoying.  I even followed the icing recipe, no brainer, it had lots of chocolate and butter so of course was yummy.  BINGO!  Joseph loved it, no fretting next year, I will know exactly what to do!