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!

Pastella per crêpes, Crêpes ai funghi and Crêpes al proscuitto e fontina

Nothing for who knows how long, then three recipes at once! Well cheating a little... translated this is just a basic crêpe recipe and two types of crêpes. 

Crêpe batter, Crêpes ai funghi and Ham and fontina crêpes to be exact!

Thought I'd get one more post in before I have to pack away the Silver Spoon for the big move... but I may potentially be kitchen-less for a while - here's hoping it's not for too long!

These were full on - batter for crêpes, ingredients for crêpes, cooking of ingredients for crêpes, cooking the actual crêpes, making a Bechamel sauce, filling and rolling the crêpes, then finally baking the whole lot! Totally. Worth. It.

First up: crêpe batter 

Ingredients

Mushroom filling

Cooking soooo many crêpes - started out thick, and got thinner as I got more confident!

The finished product - so cheesy and gorgeous!

Uova fritte all 'Americana

American Style Eggs

No blog posts for weeks (absolutely no excuse besides utter laziness) and now two at once! Went to Borough market yesterday and had a few yummy bits in the fridge, so thought what better to use them on than catching up on my blog.

Sunday morning - Pancetta in the fridge and a section in the Silver Spoon called "fried" - what more could you want?!

Ingredients

Eggs look a bit weird cause the recipe says to "use a wooden spoon to flip the egg whites over the yolks to cover"

So naughty but so yummy

Really yummy but I'm now drinking a heap of tea to try and soak up all that grease! Worth it though.

Cappesante in salsa di zafferano

Scallops in saffron sauce

So I think i kind of messed this one up a bit. A couple of reasons... 

1. I'm assuming that these scallops are poached, but after I'd simmered the wine for 10 minutes there was no liquid left!

2. The sauce didn't look nearly as lovely as it did in the picture (think I had the heat too high - so the carrot coloured up a bit and in turn coloured the sauce).

and finally

3. L didn't like it at all.

Oh dear!

But still I thought it tasted really lovely. Scallops were soft and plump, sauce - although brown and slighly weird looking - was creamy and went well with the scallops. And who would have thought to put carrots with scallops?!

So here it is... complete with jazzy pictures taken on a Cannon G11 borrowed from a lovely friend - thanks H!

Scallops in saffron sauce

Simmering the liquid

Mmmmm

I cheated here and added a bit more wine... which also cooked off!

The finished product

And there we have it - my first Silver Spoon fail - ah well!

Pasticcio di bacon e patate

Weirdly translated - Bacon and Potato Pie - cause this really isn't a pie at all! But more on that later...

Firstly I have to share this weird fact: I randomly picked a recipe - as per normal - and can you believe, it was the one and only recipe I'd ever cooked out of this book before I started "surfing"! (chocolate cake in case you're wondering!)

Anyway back to Bacon and Potato Pie... which isn't really pie! No crust, no top (as a proud Aussie, I know... pie's have tops!)

Ingredients ready to roll

In the oven

The finished product

But in saying all that this recipe was really great! With bacon, onion, butter, eggs and potato - all baked in the oven- so simple.

Now I'm really getting worried that this blog is going to get very repetitive - seems like I write: "simple fresh ingredients - great recipe!" every week! Ah well, I'm having plenty of fun making and, more importantly, eating them all!

Spezzatino di coda di rospo con riso alla curcuma

Or Monkfish Stew with Turmeric Rice.

I'm still trying to use up all my cupboard staples - so this week I picked a recipe at random but just had a quick read to check I had most of the ingredients - not really cheating! 

Ingredients ready to go

Recipe #4

In progress

The finished stew - so colourful!

Monkfish Stew - doesn't sound very appetizing at all! But yet again the simplicity of the flavours were amazing. Plus I got to drink the rest of the bottle of wine - no complaints there! Comments: I added too much turmeric so the rice was slightly spicy - but otherwise yum!