Week 25 – French Onion Soup with Gruyere Croutons, Beef Bourguignon and Crème Caramel

One of the my friends had suggested doing a Come Dine With Me style set of dinner parties, and I hosted mine last Wednesday. In order to get some form of inspiration, I was flicking through a new recipe book (Jamie Does), and spotted a Crème Caramel recipe. It reminded me that there were a few recipes that I wanted to try out in order to recreate some of the delicious meals I’d eaten in Paris last month, so I decided upon a French themed menu for my party, and then chose to make 3 recipes I’d never tried out before!

My starter was French Onion Soup, sometimes I’d had most night on holiday. I managed to find a recipe in a Soup recipe book I have, and thought I’d bought all the ingredients. However, on Wednesday I discovered half way through that I’d forgotten some Sherry vinegar, so ended up finding a second recipe on the Internet and combining the two! The key seemed to be cooking the onion in olive oil and butter for as long as possible so that they were soft and creamy. And overall, the soup was relatively easy to make. I also made my own croutons for the soup by toasting some baguette slices in oil and garlic. Finally once my guests had arrived, I added the croutons to the soup, grated some Gruyere cheese on top and grilled under the cheese was bubbling. My two guests both finished their bowls, and seemed to enjoy it!

My main course was beef bourguignon and I found a recipe for the beef on the Internet, courtesy of Delia Smith. I’d had this a couple of times in Paris, and really liked how winey it was. This was another slow cooker job – I popped some onions, shallots, garlic, bay leaves, pancetta, beef, flour, thyme and a bottle of Bordeaux in the slow cooker in the morning before work and then came home to some delicious smells, and everything bubbling away nicely. I served this with some cheddar mash, and it seemed to go down very well with the guests – particularly Andrew, who had a second plateful!

Finally came my desert, which I’d been panicking about all day. I’d made this on the Tuesday evening so that it had plenty of time to set. It felt quite a challenging recipe. I hadn’t made caramel before, so I was a bit worried about that. As it was cooking I wasn’t completely confident what it was meant to look like, but when I thought it was ready I poured it into some ramekins. I then made my custardy mixture, again something completely new, but it seemed to taste ok as I poured it on top of the caramel. The ramekins were placed in the oven in a ban marie and on a low temperature, and once cooled popped in the fridge. When the time came to serve the desert I was very worried that they weren’t going to come out of the ramekins – however once the first one had came out onto the plate looking as it should I relaxed a little, and again my guests all seemed to enjoy them.

I was really pleased with these three recipes overall, and I felt they made a nice French themed meal. It was challenging doing 3 new recipes at once, but at least it has got me back up to date, with 25 new recipes this year so far!

Week 24 – Pork loin and chorizo with balsamic roasted vegetables and crushed new potatoes

This was a recipe of my own creation, designed to use up things from the fridge. I stuffed the pork loin steaks with chorizo, and then roasted them, on top of some peppers and onions with some balsamic vinegar, a little olive oil and some sage.

I had some lovely Jersey Royal potatoes, so boiled these, crushed them a little with my potato masher and added some butter. I then served the roasted pork steak on top, with the veggies on the side.

Overall I was slightly disappointed with this. The potatoes and veg tasted great, and the balsamicy sauce was delicious, however the pork steaks had ended up a little bit too tough.

Week 23 – Nothing

No excuses this time – I just couldn’t be bothered cooking anything new, so it was back to my tried and tested old recipes!

Week 22 –Steak, Cheese and Guinness Pie and Mexican Chicken Risotto

The first recipe this week was one that I had been wanting to try for a few years. It was another Jamie Oliver recipe – this time from the Jamie at Home book. I hadn’t tried it in the past because it sounded far too unhealthy with all the Guinness, cheese and pastry. However, I was still in holiday mode at this point, so decided to finally give it a go!

I deviated slightly from the recipe and made this in my slow cooker. I always find slow cooking stews like this works well because the meet is always tender and the flavours all pull together really well. It also means I can pop all the ingredients into the cooker in the morning, and then forget about it! And this was exactly what I did here, with the exception of the cheese, which was stirred through at the very end once off the heat.

This was a really different steak pie to the ones I have made in the past. The Guinness and cheese combination added a velvety richness to the gravy, and made it quite a bit thicker than normal. Overall it was very nice, and another recipe I will be making again.

The second recipe this week was a Mexican Chicken Risotto. Risotto is something I’d never made in the past, as I’d been a bit scared that it would all end up mushy and horrible. However, after a delicious risotto at a friend’s house, I decided to give it a go.

In followed a basic risotto recipe I found on the internet, so that I knew how to cook the rice, but decided on my vegetable and meet combination myself (precooked Mexican chicken, red onion, leek, tomato and spring onion). I was very pleased with the results. The risotto was a lot easier to make than I expected, it felt very healthy with all the veg I’d crammed in, and it was very creamy and tasty.

Risotto has now become one of my regular recipes, and I have already made it another 3 or 4 times, each time with different veggies and different meats. My favourite flavour combination so far has been a Mediterranean inspired one with peppers, chilli and chorizo.

Weeks 20 and 21 - Nothing

I spent most of these two weeks on holiday – first in Paris, and then in Aviemore, so didn’t have much opportunity to try out any new recipes.

Week 19 – Vanilla Cupcakes

The first Friday in May saw the next Baking Group, and the challenge this time was cupcakes. After mentioning this at work, one of the girls I work with suggested trying the vanilla cupcake recipe used by the Magnolia Bakery in New York, and very kindly lent me her recipe book.

Aside from having to work out what the American cup measurements meant in grams, the cupcake mixture was easy to make, and the cupcakes came out perfectly formed! To ice them I used another Magnolia Bakery recipe for some vanilla buttercream. I’d made plenty of buttercream icing before, however this was a bit different because it involved mixing the icing for considerably longer than I had done in the past. The results were very good – super creamy icing! Whilst my cupcakes didn’t win the challenge (Hazel’s white chocolate ones did that), I did get a couple of comments about how good the icing was.