Portuguese Custard Tart

So, Nigel Slater, my favourite British food writer and cook, I am very much influenced by his style of cooking. Simple and comforting, sort to say. Well, he is also influenced and learned from many others, like by this Portuguese-born beauty.

His another programme was on air (remotely available even at my home) and this is from one of the Portuguese man who came to England and opened his custard tart shop.

Flaky pastry case holds thick custard filling, flavoured with hint of cinnamon and lemon.
This gives you a heavenly comforting bites for your tea break.

Beef Pie

Wrapped in a flaky pastry blanket, beef stew is sweeping out when it cuts out.
A perfect comforting food for cold winter night.

Macaroons

For a keen home baker, you want to once challenge this petit sanctuary of French creation at home.
Macaroon.

It's crispy bites at the first contact with your teeth and anxious shell to break, then reach to the gooey chocolate ganache. So delicate and fragile. Ready to eat after 24 hours of ganache sandwich.

Here are some baking tips:

1. Almond powder should be fine. Grain them finely in the food processor but do not over done as it releases oil and become greasy. Shift the powder and take out lumps.

2. Don't over-mix the meringue and rest of dry ingredients.

3. Dry the skin of the shells very well before putting them in the oven. (it doesn't stick with fingers when touched)

4. Bake with low heat oven and turn around the tray in a half way to bake equally.

5. Shell to be cooled enough to cream the ganache. Then sleep them 24 hours in the fridge before putting them into your mouth.

Raspberry White Chocolate Opera

British berries are so good, as very cheep and got intense flavour in the summer season.

I squashed some of them on a plate and dried in the very low temperature oven for quite some time, I made dried rasberry to make raspberry white chocolate cream" for this gorgeous cake.

It's Hayato's 32 Birthday (as earlier post showed Lamb dinner, this was the dessert), so it's a perfect excuse to concentrate shaving, creaming and whipping chocolate.

I used almond powder for the chocolate sponge to make it moist, and ganache layer to intense more chocolaty opera styled cake.

Chocolate-Banana-Crumble Cake

Inspired by the Mini Banoffee pie appeared in the Great British Bake Off 2012,
I de-constructed to Chocolate sponge, Banana Mousse, and Caramel Crumble and re-constructed to this.
Here it is my Chocolate-Banana-Crumble Cake.
This is one of my best mini cakes ever.
12 of them had gone in 2 days. 

Vegetarian Quiche

Only vegetables but so satisfying Quiche.
Potato, Spinach, and some cheddar cheese as you like.

Pizza Margerita

French Camembert Magician

French Cheese man at London's Borough Market gave me this recipe.
"Take this and cook with cooking chorizo in the oven, and mmmuah"
He was a magician.

Peach and Hazelnuts salad

It looks complex, but it's a composure of simple stuff.
Caramelised peach, boiled french beans, roasted beetroots and hazelnuts. 

Fig Salad

This is my ultimate heaven salad.
Mozzarella, Avocado, Tomato, Figs, and Basil source.
This is just too good to wet your appetite, maybe with a glass of chilled white will do good for your summer lunch. 

Beef Wellington

Here is my special Beef Wellington. 
I know it's not as long as the traditional British Wellington, but taste as good or even better than that. I modify it to serve to only two people. 

Unlike traditional or typical British Wellington to use mushroom and chesnuts stuffing, I rather use chicken mousse with mushroom around the beef.  Wrapped by savoy cabbage helps keep all the moist of beef and chicken mousse. 

Actually, this is so tasty and enjoyable until the very edge as chicken mousse with pie is so delicious even without beef. 

Lamb Steak

For Hayato's 32 Birthday, we decided to eat Lamb. I had never really thought I would have served Lamb on my table, but it happened. Lamb is always so stinky, too animalish flavour, and scared to make our body smell bad. Forget about it. Good lamb do good.

Both of us, Hayato and I are getting more simple life. We tend to like more simple stuff, like good white shirt and piano music.
So as our taste of food.
Finding a good butcher is one thing.
Cooking with only salt and pepper is another thing that we ended up with.

We bought good red lamb chop, blue camenbert and a bottle of red Sant-Emilion. Of course my home baked bread to along with.

Lamb shouldn't cook too long otherwise it ruin the whole balance of flavours and stiffen the structure.
So, only with very high heat of pan, caramelise the surface.
Voala, the very juicy Lamb steak.

Saffron Mango Bread

Actually, they were not quite as delicious as they look. 
The reason is 1. I used a bit stinky dried mango, 2. I soaked dried mango with Guavaberry Rum which I don't like the smell, 3. Lacking salt. 

Bread needs quite an amount of salt than people think. If not enough salt, the bread goes blunt. It's almost unrecognizable as bread without salt. That important, the amount of salt is. 
So it's my fault to put random amount of left over salt from an old sticky bag from my home town. 
For my contingency plan, I will put lots of butter for the toast.

Poppy Seed Rolls

Rustic Campagne

Flat Bread

Having a lazy sunny day, I came up with very lazy flat bread for lunch. 
No need to kneed the dough, no need to scale any. Just flour, salt, water to mix in a bowl, and roll it thin, and pan fry it. Here it is, I served with cream cheese and tomato dill salad, with a drizzle of chili oil. 

Koala!

Bar Pepito - Sherry Bar

I and my boyfriend Hayato, we are in a very difficult moment about our life. Leaving London for good, or moving to a country side. 

We had a perfect excuse to go out in such a day, we ran in the morning, ate, slept, and waited. So a little treat to our patient days. 

Sherry bar Little Petito. What a lovely corner in a stoned square, we found this little tiny spanish sherry cave, marked with barrows and dim candle to lit our decent appetite.

As a typical Andalusian looking pretty staff tried us with a glass of mid-range (not too sweet, not too dry) sherry, we took "Apostoles, Goruzalez Byass". 

It was incredible aroma coming through, tanggy hazel nutty smoky favour left on my tongue. we also ordered a cow cheese with fig compote to go with. 

It all harmonized on my mouth, created such a quality night.

Scandinavian rye open sandwich

Another Scandinavian bite. 

A slice of rye bread, cream cheese, smoked salmon, dill, capers, pink pepper corns, a drizzle of olive oil. It makes perfect harmony of winter bite.

Bagles

Inspired by The Great British Bake off, again it surged me to bake this one. 

I only baked Bagels back in Japan probably when I was ay University student, it was my Bagle boom. 

Bagel has quite a stories for me, a nostalgia, and indeed a starting point of my baking/cafe journey. 

COPA, it's called. 

A Bagel sandwitch shop in my home town. It smelled so foreign, post cards on the wall were all over from world, sounds of BBC from old radio, deep ruby coloured coffee, master's unmistakable move to make a perfect sandwich. 

I was a high school student. A bit precoucious one of course, sitting such a bar counter with school uniform. I was so fascinated to run my own one day. 

COPA closed when Satoshi san, the master decided to go to Tokyo for bread training for good, he said " I should be able to bake own bagels if I serve bagel sandwich". It was so cool.  I was a bit sad COPA closed, but I easily met him in Tokyo again to do a cafe tour together. I and Satoshi san had a very good time in Tokyo, discovering new cafes and discussed what we liked, while I was feeling a bit odd, the high school girl and a cafe master, being on a same stage to talk a about cafes. Anyway, I was dreaming of having one like Satoshi san's COPA.

That's how I started my cafe dream. It's all just make sense to me. I am still dream of having my own cafe, Cafe de Satoko.

 

Poppyseed&Sesami Bagles

Wholemeal Bagles

Raisin and White Chocolate Sugar Bread

I baked this one for Asami, who always be like my and Hayato's little sister in London. 

We play basketball together and Albam together. 

Lots of white chocolate chips and raisins inside and finished with Perles de Sucre, little french make up.