Monday 16 January 2012

Maionese (ricetta base)

A very last minute Silver Spoon recipe on a Sunday afternoon cooking for friends. I bought what I thought was horseradish sauce from the divine Blackheath farmers markets (along with organic beef and vege) for a rather particular horseradish connoisseur. Luckily (for my blog!) it turned out to be fresh grated horseradish - sans sauce - so what better way to impress the horseradish connoisseur than to make it from scratch!

I started with a basic mayonnaise recipe and after an hour of whisking drops of that oil, and vinegar into egg yolks (with a blister to prove it was hand made) I stirred in the one tablespoon of suggested rafano (horseradish). The rather particular horseradish connoisseur then made me keep adding tablespoon, after tablespoon, after tablespoon... til the whole jar was in the mayonnaise.


And he was spot on... it was perfect.

Ingredients...

Please... not another Silver Spoon fail!

   
The most perfect Horseradish mayonnaise ever (if I do say so myself!)
And if you're curious how the rest of the meal turned out. Check out my hugely talented photographer friend, Helen's, blog post about the day here (and she laughed at me making mayonnaise!)

Panna cotta caramellata

What a disastrous attempt at this Caramelized panna cotta! I was rushed, I curdled the cream mix, my caramel seized and I burnt myself! The recipe said it served 4, so I doubled the quantity - for the 8 people I was cooking for - it would have served about 20! 

Luckily though, after making a new caramel and much whisking of the cream (when it said "fold") it looked half decent and I got it in the oven.

So much for an elegant, refined dessert!


And in the end it did turn out onto plates ok... but not ok enough to take a picture for my blog! I'm embarrassed! 


The cream mixture and the doomed caramel

In the oven... hoping for the best!