White Butter Makes Everything Butter

Beurre Blanc

You know when you cook fish at home and it's just SO fishy? Then you go out and order fish and they say it's cooked with "lemon butter" and when they bring it out there's this creamy sauce layered thinly on the fish, and it tastes like HEAVEN? Music plays in your head, a smile appears on your face, your eyes develop that romantic fuzzyness that makes your partner extra gorgeous? That, ladies and gentlemen is Beurre Blanc.

What I did was a very simple supper, fish fried in olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper, and steamed broccoli. Couldn't be more boring or bland, right? But the addition of the magic (definitely black magic) sauce, just changed it completely! It tasted like something I would order at a restaurant, and rave about afterwards!

Fish has always been problematic for me. We didn't cook much fish when I was growing up so I've been a little lost about diversifying my cooking techniques and sauces. Beurre Blanc has been a huge breakthrough.. Just HUGE!!

Thank you Julia Child, for teaching me how to cook something this good for my fiance.

Beurre Blanc
From Mastering The Art of French Cooking

1 tblsp chopped shallot
60 ml white wine vinegar
60 ml white wine
salt and pepper
350 g butter, chilled and chopped into about 25 cubes.

1) Put the wine, vinegar and shallot into a small saucepan with generous salt and pepper pinches.

2) Boil until only about a tablespoon of liquid remains.
3) Take pot off the heat and turn heat source down to low.

4) Add two cubes of butter and whisk in vigorously.
5) When they start getting soft and melting, add another cube, and put pot back onto a low heat.
6) Keep whisking until the butter starts melting and adding extra cubes. The mixture should be thick and creamy.

7) You can add more than the butter specified (I added a bit more), but preferably not less, as that might make the vinegar taste too strong.
8) Drizzle onto fish and broccoli and enjoy!

I cheated a bit here.. I couldn't get shallots so I used onion chopped very finely. Also, I could only get white spirit vinegar which isn't very high quality, but even so the sauce was completely, life-changingly fantastic!!

A Choc-Chip Formidable Diet Enemy

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Baking is all about sharing for me. It has to be. For anyone who doesn't live with about 10 people, it just has to be. It's just the most wonderful feeling, feeding delicious tidbits to friends and family and making them happy. This isn't like cooking- it's not nourishing the body no no - baked goods nourish the soul.

 Chocolate chip cookies are very much like pizza- people have VERY specific tastes and what's Nobel prize deserving for one person doesn't even appear on the radar for another.

These cookies were large, super chocolatey and crunchy. They have that New-York coffee shop feel- they've got the American size, the luring peaking chocolate and that gorgeous oven tan.

Taking these to work to share with my colleagues, and Ralph's colleagues is just so wonderful. There are precious few ways for people to show warmth towards others these days- even the people with whom you spend most of your time. Playing it cool is much more fashionable, but unfortunately it isn't very me. This is how I compensate :-).

Chocolate pieces held together with minimal dough is how I try to take care of those around me. How do you show others warmth?

Chocolate Chip Cookies
From Smitten Kitchen

250 g cake flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
170 g melted unsalted butter
1 cup caramel sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tblsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups chocolate chips

1) Preheat oven to 165 C.
2) Sift together the flour, bicarb and salt.
3)  Beat butter together with the sugars. I thought I was going wrong here because this is what I ended up with:

   
but this was perfectly fine!

4)  Add the vanilla essence, egg and egg yolk and beat thoroughly.
5) Add the flour mixture and mix thoroughly with a spoon- don't beat here as this forms a sort of dough. 
6) Add chocolate chips and stir in to distribute evenly:

7) Now, make big balls of this dough- I measured roughly with a 60 ml measure. And place, quite far apart on a baking tray.(I used a Swiss roll tray and placed 2 per row- about 3-4 rows per tray, these are large cookies!)

8) The cookies should bake for about 15 minutes, you'll know they're ready when the outer edges of the cookie brown. Try not to do more than one batch at a time- I did and my bottom tray ended up baking very differently- my chocolate chips melted and burned and created a very hard unpleasant cookie- avoid this!

Really Pork

Pork Fried Rice

When I was studying, and completely skint, Chinese food was a necessity. Eating it cold and in bed for breakfast was my absolute favourite..

It never looked this fancy though- it was all take-away boxes and forks! And the portions were much, MUCH bigger!

There's this misconception I have about restaurant food. It's like I can't even try to reproduce it at home, because I wouldn't be able to guess the ingredients and get it right. But fried rice? There's no subtlety there.

Happy kitty loves it :-)

I am loving cooking and baking lately- I needed a bit of a break after a tough 6 months of studying but the whole becoming-a-wife thing has me in this dreamy state where I want to cook, bake, clean and give foot massages and just in general act like a 50's housewife- and I'm loving it! A month and a half to go!!

Pork Fried Rice

Adapted from All Recipes

3 small carrots

500g pork- no bones

1/2 cup frozen peas

2 tblsp sunflower oil

2 eggs

2 cups Basmati rice

soy sauce

1) Peel the carrots, and pop them into some boiling water. Cook until tender.

2) Put the rice into boiling water, cook for 20 minutes and drain.

3) While the carrots and rice are cooking, cut up the pork into small pieces- roughly 1cm by 2cm.

4) Drain the carrots over a sieve containing the frozen peas. This will defrost them nicely. Chop the carrots up into small pieces.

5) Now, heat up oil in a large pan or wok over a high heat.

6) Add the pork, and season generously with salt and pepper. Cook until browned - when those sticky caramel bits appear on the meat.

7) Add the carrots and peas, and cook them for a couple of minutes. Season again.

8) Crack the eggs straight into the pan, one at a time, stirring furiously to scramble and distribute.

9) Add the rice and stir it around to combine.

10) Now, start adding the soy sauce. Add a few squirts, and stir them around to colour the rice. Taste and serve or add more and repeat.

11) Serve hot.

This meal goes on and on- fed me for 4 days of lunches! Gotta love Chinese food..