Land of the Famous Five

When you were reading about the adventures of the Famous Five is this what you imagined Cornwall to be like?

Glad to Be Home

I survive!

The day is over and I’m still here to tell the tale.  Phew  (*´ο`*)=3

I was so nervous the entire day, completely working myself up into a mini state.

You see that little wrap?  It was half of the lunch that GM bought me.  He personally brought it to my work for me because he knew I would be too busy preparing to go out and buy my own.  He bought the perfect lunch – an avocado, cucumber, fresh greens, tomato, pine nuts and parmesan cheese wrap; not too heavy but substantial enough, fresh and tasty.  Even then I could only eat half of it, can you believe I actually lost my appetite??  I must have been in a bad way.  Luckily I had lots of people to talk to and GM and Ah Ma wrote me emails to calm me down.  Thanks Ah Ma!

The presentation and interview went okay.  It definitely wasn’t half as nerve-wracking as I’d built it up to be in my head.  I knew both the interviewers and at the end they told me I did really well.  I thought I could have done better though but I was just glad to have gone through it and come out smiling on the other side.  At the end of the interview, off the record I told my interviewers that I was really relieved it was all over and they said, “We can tell!” hahaha.  Well………….. this isn’t official yet, as in it hasn’t been formally announced but I have it on good authority that I got the job!  Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ  Yay me!

Along with the wrap, GM also bought me a slice of banana cake for a mini celebration after my interview.  How nice =)  But I was so busy chatting after my interview that I had no time to eat it so I brought it home.  So many of my friends came over or phoned to ask me how things went.  That was really nice of them but I suppose it could have been because they were nosy.  I like to think they were being concerned though haha.

On the train journey home I started planning my dinner, wondering what to order since I wanted to give myself a rest from cooking after my monster of a day.  But suddenly I really felt like onion gravy, lots and lots of onion gravy.  So I went according to plan (I’ve been meaning to cook this) and made toad in the hole.  Plump, succulent sausages in a light, fluffy batter drowned in fragrant, peppery onion gravy.  It was exactly what I needed.

I have another interview tomorrow which I’m still going for despite having been told I got today’s post.  I’m going to go along to see what I can gain from the experience.  At least the pressure’s off right?

I’m just really glad to be home and that today is over.

Lavender and Tarte Tatin

I’ve had this event in my diary since early this year – the lavender harvest.

For some reason, sometime earlier this year I suddenly thought “I wonder if there are any lavender fields in London”.  I googled it and not only was there a lavender field in London, it was really close to us and they’ve got an annual harvest weekend.  So I entered the dates in my diary and finally the weekend rolled round this week.

It was a small affair with a few stalls selling lavender products (soap, oil etc) and a big field of lavender where you can pick your own and pay for them later on.

It wasn’t what I was expecting in that I thought I’d be hit with a great gust of lavender scent once I got into the field but there was nothing.  Maybe a very slight whiff of lavender but generally it just smelt like summertime in England.  The lavender was pretty though.  We didn’t bring any money so we didn’t end up picking any, we just took some photos and that was it.

I’m still glad I went.  As I grow older I find I’m appreciating nature more and seeing the field of  vivid purple lavender against the sunny sky made me happy.  It made me happy to live where I live, knowing I’m so close to a beautiful bit of nature.

GM and I were going over to our mates’ for dinner that night so when I got home I embarked on my first attempt at making an apple tarte tatin.  Tarte tatin is a French dessert and it’s essential an upside down apple tart.  First the apples are caramelised in lots of butter and sugar before it’s covered with pastry and bunged in the oven.

It came out pretty good!  It was a bit darker than I wanted it to be though so I had no choice but to test it before giving it to my mates hehehe.  In the end I gave them half the tarte; GM and I ate some each and left a couple of slices at home.  Next time I make it I’m going to cook the apples later so that they retain a bit of bite to them and obviously I’m not going to let the butter and sugar caramelise too much before I put the whole thing in to bake otherwise it’ll turn out too dark again.  I’ll also probably use a different variety of apple because I used cooking apples this time and they turned out quite tart so between the apples and the sugar my tarte tatin was overly flavourful.

The pastry, however, was a triumph and I’m really happy because making tart pastry is a daunting thing for me!  See how flaky it was?

Tomorrow I have to do a written assignment which is part of a job interview.  It’s like a written exam during which I’ll be given a stack of documents to write a report on in one hour.  After that I have to have a little 10 minute discussion with the examiner.  Yikes.  Please pray for me I do really well and don’t freeze, especially in the discussion bit!  Thanks!

Baked Goods Sunday

Actually I didn’t bake that much today.  We ate loads of baked goods though.

I’ve come to realise that I really really like baking.  The way I feel for baking is different from how I feel about cooking in that if I screw up my cooking I get really frustrated and grumpy and kind of resent doing all that preparation work to produce a piece of crap at the end of it whereas if my baking goes wrong I just feel a bit disappointed but curious as to why it didn’t come out right.  More often than not I’ll seek advice as to what I’m doing wrong and attempt the recipe again.  Cooking is more of a stressful activity for me whereas I bake for fun!  Perhaps after Di wins Australian Masterchef she can open a restaurant where she does all the dishes and I’ll chip in with desserts!  Hahaha.

Don’t those vine tomatoes look gorgeous?  I was surprised to find them at our regular supermarket because the tomatoes there are normally anaemic to the point of greenness and aren’t very sweet.  For really good tomatoes I have to go to a really cheap supermarket which has a fantastic fresh fruits and vegetables section.  That’s all I ever buy from there, nice fruits and veg and nothing else because all their brands aren’t what we’re used to and I’m a creature of habit.  Haha.  Oh actually I also get salami and potato salad from there.  They have lovely potato salad.

I bought some ready made puff pastry sheets recently and had to use them up before they went off so for breakfast today I made balsamic vinegar pancetta (Italian cured meat) and vine tomato puff pastry slices.

They turned out very tasty.  I prepared them with tomato puree and some chopped garlic on the base and they turned out perfect.  Puff pastry sheets are fantastic!  They’re so convenient and easy to use.

After our puff pastry slices GM and I had dessert.  The bread rolls were bought pre-prepared – all I had to do was bung them in the oven for 10 minutes and they came out brown, crispy and hot.  Another fantastic item!  I’m never buying pre-baked baguettes again; why have cold baguette when you can do this in 10 minutes and have hot rolls?  I love these rolls.

But the real star of the pic isn’t the bread rolls….. it’s that jam next to it.  GM’s uncle came over recently remember?  Before he came over he asked me what I wanted from Paris and I said I wanted some jam, specifically those made by Christine Ferber whose jams are world renowned.  I had to limit myself to three jars since I didn’t want to impose too much on his luggage allowance but now I wish I’d asked him to buy more.

Because this jam is everything I’ve heard and more.

Out of the three jars I chose to open the Confiture Ispahan which Christine Ferber makes for Pierre Herme, a really famous French pastry chef.  The Confiture Ispahan is lychee, rose and raspberry flavoured and previously even though I knew Pierre Herme’s signature macaron was the Ispahan I’d had no desire to try it since I dislike raspberries and don’t much care for rose.  However, most of the foodie blog writers I read seem to love it so I thought “Okay, let’s see if it’s really that good” and got GM’s uncle to buy me the jam (since it would have been quite hard for him to not sit on the macaron coming over on the train haha).

Well the jam.  I don’t even know how I can do it justice with my words.  I don’t think I can.  It was exquisite.  Not gloopy and over gelatinous like your bog-standard jam but smooth and light.  I could have almost drunk it like a soup.  And the flavours: I never knew lychee, rose and raspberry would go together so well.  On first taste the lychee was strongest but later on the raspberry came through with a subtle hint of rose.  It was so beautiful I nearly sank to my knees in thanks.  Well okay that’s a bit much but you get the picture.  Haha.  It was certainly moreish; each swallowed mouthful left me with such a delicate hint of fine, fruity fragrance that it made me feel like I needed to have another, just to seek out the different notes again.  But invariably I’d swallow the next mouthful too quickly to really do the jam justice and would need to have another.  And another.  And another.

You know a food is good when after eating it the first thing I think is, “Jo and Di need to try this”.  And this is exactly what I thought this afternoon.  Unfortunately, I can’t bring food into Australia!

Later on in the evening I decided to bake a cake.  Just for fun.  Remember the strawberry cake I made recently?  This is the blueberry version.

This cake turned out even better than the strawberry one but my fruit sank to the bottom again.  I will be making this again soon to try out a new method I’ve learnt to prevent fruit from sinking.

From tomorrow onwards I will be back on my healthy eating plan.  I’ve made some exciting plans recently and need to shape up!

Food Diary

Brunch – Pancetta and vine tomato puff pastry slice

Dessert – One wholemeal bread roll and one mutigrain bread roll with butter and that gorgeous jam……

Dinner – Thai green curry with rice.  I made another curry because this is GM’s and my favourite dish of the moment.  Today’s was vegetarian though.  Very good but spicier than the ones I’d made previously!

Dessert – Two slices of my very gorgeous blueberry cake.  We ate it warm this time and it was really really good.  I love this cake.

Drinks – English tea, water

Exercise – None!

Big Eating Day

I did loads of cooking today.  Even before my friends arrived I was already feeling tired!  Good job I made the cake above last night so I didn’t have to rush around measuring and whisking on top of all the other stuff I had to do.

My menu for today was white fungus and papaya soup, choi sum (veggies), thai green curry, boiled sui gaw (prawn dumplings), roast duck (GM bought this from a Chinese restaurant) and I also made Ah Ma’s assam prawns!  How does it look?  I think it was quite close to Ah Ma’s but not as good.  Nobody can make assam prawns like Ah Ma.

Another dish on my menu was Di’s beef with pineapple!  Does it look like how it’s meant to Di?  It was nice, very tangy.  I think my friends enjoyed it.

This is my cake after it’d just come out of the oven last night.  This must be the first cake I’ve baked in my unevenly heated oven that didn’t come out lopsided.  I didn’t even turn the pan round midway, how amazing.  It was a strawberry buttermilk cake, practically foolproof to make and had a good crumb.  The only thing is the strawberries were too heavy for the cake bit so they sank to the bottom and where the strawberries were it was a bit soggy, otherwise it was good.  My friends enjoyed the cake, some even had seconds.

Food Diary

Lunch – A bit of leftover mee siam

Dinner – All the dishes mentioned above with rice

Dessert – One slice strawberry cake with small scoop vanilla ice-cream

Snack – Doritos, 4 Ferrero Rochers, some sweets

Drinks – English tea, Chinese tea, water

Exercise – None except loads of cooking and housework in between cooking!