Wow - this is different

Well, as you might remember, in February I had a go at doing my own Sauerkraut. The other day we did some red slaw and had some red cabbage left over, so I thought it might be worth a try to treat that in the same way.
Obviously for Easter it's a great idea to have lamb and so we did. Here in the UK is is customary to have pickled red cabbage with Sheppard's Pie. So I thought that 'Red Sauerkraut' would work as well and it certainly did! We loved it!!!

Home made Macaroons

The company I work for is headquartered in Paris, France. As such I go there quite frequently and the family love it when I bring back Fauchion Macaroons.
You might have worked out from this blog, that we do love our food. The eating and the making. My wife kept on saying "I wonder how you make these". We live near Windsor and when we had a trip to the Windsor Daniel's department store, I found a cheap copy of Stephane Glacier's DVD "macaroons".

Ever since it has been a family joke to ask Rhona (my wife) - "when will you do macaroons???".

So when our 9 year old son was pushed for finding a Mother's day gift, he searched on Amazon and found Mad about Macarons! by Jill Colonna (obviously macroons and macarons are supposed the same thing -  let me know which spelling you prefer).

Now Rhona really got the bug and after reading the book a few times, she gave it a go. Apparently the quick reference section at the back of the book giving you the measurements for different quantities numbers of macro(o)ns was incredibly helpful.

In her own word, Rhona's piping skills need improving. So the sizes of the macaro(o)ns in her first attempts were varied. Practice no doubt will help on that, but we all agreed that (particularly for a first attempt) the result was a triumph from a flavor and a texture point of view.

I just can't wait for the next few tries...

Confused Sushi Dinner

The family have been complaining that I hadn't made sushi for ages, so I was press ganged into changing that. While writing this my wife is asserting that no press ganging was required - anyway... we had sushi for dinner last night.

We had Inari Sushi (seasoned pouches of fried tofu pouches filled with sushi rice), Igiri Sushi with prawn, konbu cured hake and tuna, and Maki Sushi with spiced tuna tartar and salmon roe.
With the sushi we had  Ebi no Suimono (dash based soup with prawn and spinach), Tosa Sauce and and a scallop.

The scallop was Peruvian and looked stunning. I found them yesterday at Waitrose and could resist adding them. Rick Stein got a lovely recipe for scallop with a hazelnut and coriander butter (you can find that on Foodie Couple Blog). I adjusted it to be a soy sauce and chili paste butter.

So why did I call this "Confused Sushi"? Well, the spiced tuna tartar and the spiced butter for the scallop, both used Gochujang, the Korean Chili paste, which is hardly authentic Japanese. However we loved it.

Mother's Day Dinner Inspired by Heston

We had a lovely Mother's Day - at least in my opinion. However, Mrs M seems to agree.

Dinner was actually based on two separate ideas. A few years ago my wife got a book on light eating and one of the ideas was Venison Steak with a black pepper and Juniper Berries crust.

The other inspiration was based on Heston Blumenthal's roasted artichokes dish.We had a a lovely dinner. However, when we explained that venison an deer are the same thing, it would have helped if we wouldn't have seen Bambi's relative  on our walk through Swinley's Forrest

It wasn't really a problem though and dinner was a real success.

                                                                                                                                                                    We had venison steak in a crushed black pepper and juniper berry crust with steamed broccoli, sauteed mushrooms and artichokes, based on a recipe from Heston Blumenthal's "Fat Duck Cook Book".