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A FRIDAY DEGUSTATION

It is Friday and we thought we will prepare a degustation for Mr Washy. We usually spend too much money when we go out dining. The Washy cannot drink too much when we are out dining as he would need to drive. That isn't a plus point for dining out.

We don't usually like to cook with a specific recipe. There are too many different ones out there. We will pick a base recipe and read the others for inspirations. There will always be some 'secret' ingredients people add to dishes to give it that 'omph'.

We have a surplus of bread, don't ask us why. We have concocted some dishes which will make use of these bread.

Nonetheless, here is our menu :
  • Amuse Bouche
  • Broccoli Soup
  • Special Herbbed Fritata with Caramelized Tomato Salsa and Home-grown Greens
  • Chipolata Stew
  • Crispy Plum and Ginger Bread and Butter Pudding
The degustation is served with Spanish Rosé.

 Here is our Amuse bouche :
It is a medley of tastes. From left to right,
  • We have a broccoli broth, lightly salted to sip
  • Poached garlic on a bed of stir-fried garden greens and a slice of broccoli stem
  • Caramelized tomato salsa with cumin on a fresh bed of mizuna from our garden
  • Chicken liver pate with truffle oil on pan-fried bread crackers, garnished with basil 
Here is how we poached our garlic :

  1. Slice off the top of the garlic bulbs.
  2. Sprinkle salt.
  3. Drizzle with olive oil.
  4. Fill the bottom of the pot with some water.
  5. Cover and steam in oven. We put it when our pudding when baking. With the claypot we were using, there was no mess with the smells and tastes.
This is our claypot...

And this little outlet on the lid lets out the steam so that our garlic bulbs are poaches and not steamed.

45 minutes in a 180degrees oven, done.

Here is our Broccoli soup from Gordon Ramsay's recipe. Yum-my! So simple yet so flavoursome.

  1. Boil a pot of water.
  2. Make sure it is boiling rapidly.
  3. Add salt to season.
  4. Add broccoli flowers.
  5. Season with salt again.
  6. Close lid and let boil for 3.5-4 min.
  7. Blend with its own stock. The stock should cover the flowers half way in the blender. Add more later if you want. Season if not salty enough. 
  8. Enjoy. Ramsay serves it with goat's cheese and walnut. We do not have those ingredients but we will be serving it with a dollop of cream nonetheless.
Here is our Fritata, only with bread crumbs, leftovers from our bread and butter pudding.

We put it salt and pepper, milk and eggs. Make it like how you would make a tortilla.

We added sauteed onions with rosemary and pan fry it like a mini tortilla. Love our little pan!

Our fritata flipped. We didn't cook it for too long, not long enough for the middle to be cooked. This is because we will microwave it before serving. Yes, it is too much work preparing a degustation and a microwave comes in handy.

Reducing our tomato salsa. We pan fried some chopped tomatoes with salt and sugar, roasted cumin and a squirt of ketchup. Let the juice of the tomatoes reduce and it is done.

A stew is not exciting to look at. We will be serving it with spaghetti and fresh oregano and truffle oil. Oh, not to forget cloves of the poached garlic.

Here is our Bread and Butter Pudding :

The layering is done with buttered bread, sprinkled vanilla sugar, plum jam and ginger powder. This is made with our home made plum jam. 

Making a not-so-fat-and-not-so-sweet custard to soak it.

Soaking in progress.

It is done after soaking for 30 min and baking for 40 min. Now it just needs to cool. We will be serving this hot from the microwave, with a dollop of cream.

Eet Smakelijk! (Bon Appetit in Dutch)

2 comments:

Joël Céré said...

Looks delicious! When are you coming back to cook something for us?

suzene said...

Joel, your wife can cook very very well!

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