The Giant Savoury Scone for the Boys

We like them small, big, fat, skinny, sweet. savoury...the boys? Scones, of course!

Scones are other cheesecakes : I LOVE them, it's as simple as that. 
And in my Conquest to share the food I love, I've discovered this new favourite of mine.

So without further a do: 

Potato, cheese and rosemary loaf

aka
The Giant Savoury Scone for The Boys 

Of course, a scone with potatoes in it...you're not going to tell me that this doesn't stand a chance in the race to your Man's favourite ever pastry?
Actually, at my lastest dinner party, it was as successful amongst girls as boys!

This loaf is very much like a giant scone. It doesn't require knidding, it is soft, filling but lighter than a classic savoury cake, and moister than a bread.
The flavours of cheese and rosemary just makes it taste like hoidays (beach holidays? or Ski holidays? Whatever makes you happy my Dear!)

Delicious with a soup or with a salad, it makes a perfect starter or light main veggie course. 

Prescription : on a week night, coming back home from work. 10 min preparation, 25 cooking time (just enough time to watch an episode of Friends). Done.
Do we really need anything more than that?  

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic cloves , thinly sliced

350g self-raising flour , plus more for dusting

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

85g cold butter , cut into cubes

150g pot natural full-fat yogurt

4 tbsp full-fat milk

250g cooked new potatoes , sliced

1 tsp chopped rosemary , plus extra small sprigs

50g Parmesan (or vegetarian alternative), grated

85g Gruyère , half diced, half grated

Make the loaf:

1.Heat the oil in a medium pan, then gently fry the garlic for 10 mins until softened but not coloured. Set aside. Heat oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7.

2.Put the flour, salt and baking powder into a food processor, then whizz in the butter until it disappears. Tip into a large bowl, then make a well in the middle. Warm the yogurt and milk together in a microwave for 1 min or in a pan; it should be hot and may well go a bit lumpy-looking. Tip into the bowl and quickly work into the flour mix using a cutlery knife. As soon as it's all in, stop.

3.Turn the dough onto a floured surface, bring it together with floured hands, then press out to a large rectangle. Scatter over the potatoes, chopped rosemary, garlic, some of its oil and most of the cheese. Knead a few times, shape into a round, then lift onto a floured baking sheet.

4.Score the top, scatter with the rest of the cheese, poke in a few rosemary sprigs, then drizzle with the remaining oil. Bake for 25 mins until risen, golden and sizzling around the edges. Best eaten just warm.

Tip: you can make it without potatoes or replace them with pretty much any kind of cooked, cold and dry leftover vegetables.

What's on the Drinks Menu Alex?
Potato - cheese, an association that is always a winner. Rosemary is the key flavour here. 
I would recommend four options: 

• a white Burgundy (Macon-Villages or Rully), 
• a chardonnay from Australia, 
• a cabernet-sauvignon from Bordeaux (Médoc and Haut-Medoc) or from Loire Valley (Saumur-Champigny), 
• a merlot from Argentina 

Oh la la... mon petit pois

"Guess the ingredients"

A new concept of dinner, where your guests have to guess the ingredients of the dishes you've cooked for them.

It wasn't on purpose, but that is how our last dinner party turned out, and it was really good fun. 

How does it work? Get out there, try new combinations and let them guess.

It's really good fun as it's actually not always as easy at it seems to guess the ingredients of a dish!

So if you want to give it a try, here are some ideas:

• Avocado and chocolate vegan cake (recipe here)
• Popcorn from Joe & Seph's . Each flavour is more wicked than the other one; from the savoury goat cheese and black pepper popcorn to the Gingerbread popcorn, the fun is guaranteed!
• and of course, my wasapie soup!

 

Pie, Rocket and Wasabi soup

aka My Wasapie Soup

Ingredients (for 6 people):

2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1kg frozen pies
2 x 90g bags rocket
3 heaped tbsp ricotta
2 heaped tbsp wasabi paste (from the asian shelf of your usual supermarkets)
2 vegetable stock cubes
salt and pepper, to taste
Creme fraiche, to serve

Make the soup: 

1/ In a large sauce pan, gently fry the garlic cloves until golden.

2/ Add the pies and cook for 3 min, mixing regularly.

3/ Add the vegetable stock cubes, the rocket and add water (pre-boiled in a kettle if possible) until the vegetables are just covered. Mix, cover, and simmer for 15 min on middle heat.

4/ Mix / blend the soup. Add water depending of the desired consistency. 

5/ Add the ricotta, and wasabi paste. Adjust seasoning to your taste with salt and pepper.

6/ Serve the soup in bowls with a dollop of creme fraiche and few leaves of ricotta to decorate.

What's on the drinks menu Alex?

Perhaps one of the most difficult pairings I've had to come up with recently.

We must keep up with the light peas, the spicy wasabi and peppery rocket. But I am not going to run away.

I would recommend four options:

• a Pinot noir from New Zealand,
• a Gamay from France (Beaujolais),
• a Shiraz rosé from South Africa,
• or sparkling water which is also very suitable for starter.

Caramel and banana blondies

Big news, I'm going on holidays to Argentina!

I'm going to meet my friend Kdou who is travelling around the world for a year.

In our plans: Buenos Aires, the wildlife (whales, penguins, seals on the Puerta Madryn island, and a bit of Patagonia (glaciers, natural parks, …)

I've cleaned the lens of my camera, Chocolat my Travelling Bear (FB: Chocolat L'ourson) has jumped into the side pocket of my backpack….we are ready to go!

I can't wait to eat big steaks, dulce de leche and all these amazing foods that I don't know yet and will definitely bring back and share with you!

In the meantime, I won't take the risk of you having a hypoglycemic shock while I am away, so I've prepared a few recipes, that I will publish from the other side of the world. So you won't miss any opportunity to bake some good British food :-)

Now, I'm getting my tummy ready for Argentina with some traditional British dessert: Caramel blondies!

Banoffee (caramel and banana) blondies

Blondies are "white brownies"

Usually made with white chocolate, blondies are as indulgent as brownies. Here, featuring two "safe bet" ingredients – caramel and banana – we can't possibly go wrong. This cake might be really easy to make and might not look very impressive, but just like brownies, it is a crowd pleaser! (Kids in particular will love it)

Ingredients:

250g golden caster sugar

100g butter

100g caramel , from a jar or tin (Nestlé Carnation Caramel works well) plus 2 tbsp for the top

100g white chocolate

2 eggs

200g self-raising flour

2 ripe bananas , sliced

Make the blondies:

1. Heat the oven 180C/fan 170C/gas 4.

2. Melt the sugar, butter, caramel and chocolate together until smooth. Cool a little, then add the eggs and fold in the flour and banana.

3. Pour into a lined 20cm square tin (I used a round one), or a silicone cake mould and add a few blobs of caramel to the top, bake for 45-50 minutes or until risen and set.

4. Cut in squares and serve as you would do with brownies (I cut mine in slices because my mould was round, but it taste the same!)

Recipes from http://www.bbcgoodfood.com

We were innocently enjoying our cakes in Regent's park when suddenly we got robbed by a squirrel who stole a strawberry from our picnic. How happy I was, I could take picture of the robber enjoying his prize!

Last but not least, some other big news on Pauline à la crème anglaise!

It's nice to cook all this food, but what's for drinking with it?
From now one, our Thirsty Expert Alex, from the great French blog Mets Vins www.mets-vins.fr, will give us his drinks recommendations. 

Don't panic pregnant ladies, kids and friends on detox: Alex is not forgetting you and will also recommend non alcoholic drinks (look at this week's drinks, perfect to match our kid-friendly cake!)

So...

What's on the drinks menu Alex?
"The banana blondies feature the magic trio: banana, white chocolate and caramel, which make these blondies terribly good and sweet. That's why I'd recommend enjoying them with a refreshing drink, preferably unsweetened.
I would recommend :

• a banana milk shake,
• banana or mango banana Caribbean milk,
• or vanilla soy milk.

All served chilled of course!"

Thank you Alex :-)

Double lime and lemon cheesecake

One thing that makes a language singular is idioms. These little phrases / metaphors that most of the time wouldn't mean anything  or sound really funny if you tried to translate them word by word into a different language.

“Every cloud has a silver lining”, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”, “in a nutshell”, “on the wrong side of the tracks”, “come hell or high water”, ”a double rainbow”…I love idioms. They tell you a story, they speak for a culture.

I don’t actually know if “double rainbow” is an idiom or if I just heard it from a movie, but I love it and I use it all the time.

A double rainbow is anything that combines two layers of pleasure, i.e. a romcom that is a musical at the same time, a movie starring Brad Pitt and Ryan Reynolds (still to come, but fingers crossed someone will hear my prayers), a supplier who is both efficient and nice.
You get the point?

Double rainbows are really common in British baking, because British are never afraid of going a step too far. They put cream on top of chocolate tarts, they create cakes in which a brownie goes on top of a cookie (I swear it’s true, I made it for my Bday, and it’s absolutely evil)

I’ve told you before, the whole Pauline à la crème anglaise adventure is about embracing British baking. So I am getting around to creating my own double rainbows. Actually, the last one was a triple rainbow….

Double lemon and lime cheesecake

- the base could be eaten on its own. It’s an absolutely delicious biscuit –very crunchy, very tasty, very crumbly too

- the cheesecake is light and smooth. Well set, it’s like a lime mousse - devine

- the layer of lemon curd on the top is just the step higher in the direction of the sky (a step too far? Naaaa)

Ingredients for the base:

1 ¼ cup flour

½ cup butter, cut into pieces

1/3 cup caster sugar

¼ tsp salt

Make the base:

1/ Preheat the oven 200°C.

2/ In a big bowl, mix flour, salt and sugar together. Rub in the butter and crumble it between your fingers until it resembles moist crumbs, and make a ball with the dough.

3/ Press firmly the dough on the bottom and the sides of a cheesecake pan (a removable bottom cake tin), lined with baking parchment.

4/ Freeze crust for 10-15 min until firm

5/ Prick the crust all over with a fork and bake for 20-25 min until golden. If the pastry puffs up while baking, press it gently with a spoon. Let it cool completely while you make the filling.

Ingredients for the filling:

500g cream cheese (philadelphia or equivalent)

350g whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks

120g caster sugar

50 ml of lime juice (approx. 6 tbsp + 2 tsp)

Zest of 2 limes

1 ½  tsp of gelatine (powdered gelatine, or agar agar powder) dissolved in 2tbsp of water (or lime juice)

1-2 tsp of vanilla extract

Make the filling:

1/ In a big bowl, cream the cream cheese, sugar, lime juice and lime zest together.  Add the gelatine and vanilla extract and mix well.

2/ With a spatula, gently fold in the whipped cream (don’t over beat or it will become runny)

3/ Pour the mixture on to the cold biscuit base. Cover the cake with cling film and refrigerate for 5 hours at the very least (the cheesecake needs long to set and be really moussy. It’s first the wait) Ideally, make it the night before.

4/ 30min before serving, cover the cheesecake with a thin layer of lemon curd (recipe here)

Recipe adapted from http://chicgorgeous.blogspot.co.uk/

The Cobbler, not your average Crumble

Usual Friday night in London.

I’m on my way to meet friends in town. The girl sitting opposite me in the bus is wearing the traditional Friday Night Out Outfit: mini dress, high heels. Same old, same old.
On my side, it's mini dress (what? I told you, I embrace British Culture!), opaque tights, boots and scarf.

Suddenly, my attention is drawn to something I’ve seen so many times before: her toes are…blue. Despite the fact that it’s November and 5°C outside, this girl is wearing open sandals with no tights like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

It looks like Londoners tend to dress according to their mood of the day rather than according to the actual season. 
"Yeah, I feel like wearing my UGG boots today. It's 25 degrees, and so what? I'll just sweat my feet off"
...right.

Seasons.

I love seasons! Not only is it usually cheaper and more environmentally friendly to eat seasonal and local produces, but it’s also exciting!

I love eating different foods at different times of the year.

I love the anticipation of a season coming up: waiting eagerly for the fig season to start like a child waiting for Christmas to come.

I love looking for a million ways to cook a product when it is in season until I am sick of it: butternut squash soup, squash purée, pumpkin pie, roasted butternut squash, butternut squash gratin, …squah indigestion!

Fruits and vegetables are like clothes, we love them all the more when we change them with the seasons!

I had been waiting for it for few weeks and it’s finally here : the British plums season!

Plum Cobbler

A clobber is a kind of crumble, but different. It’s such an old traditional British cake that when I recently brought a cobbler to a party full of British people of all ages, almost nobody knew what it was!

A cobbler is made of a layer of fruits, roasted in sugar, covered by a layer of almond sponge, dropped in dollops over the fruits. The crunchy top of the sponge reveals a delicious soft inside, on top of melt-in-the-mouth caramelised fruits. Everybody absolutely loved it!

Please, do me a favour next time you are invited at a dinner party : wear season-appropriate shoes and ditch your usual crumble for a cobbler!

Ingredients:

900g plums, washed and stalked removes, the biggest ones halved

150g caster sugar – put aside 3tbsp of this sugar for the topping

For the cobbler topping:

125g plain flour

100g ground almonds

Pinch of salt

3 level tsp baking powder

110g butter cut into pieces

170ml buttermilk (or whole milk with 1tsp of lemon juice added)

1tsp almond essence

1tbsp flaked almonds

1tbsp demerara sugar

Make the cobbler:

1/ Preheat the oven 200°C

2/ Place the washed plums into a ovenproof dish, sprinkle with the sugar and leave aside.

3/ Place flour, ground almonds, salt, baking powder and the 3 tbsp of caster sugar put aside in a big bowl and mix together. Rub in the butter and crumble the mixture in your hands until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

4/ Add the buttermilk, almond essence and mix with a wooden spoon until it turns to a thick dough.

5/ Drop tablespoon-size dollops of the mixture over the fruits, around the edges and middle - about 8 to 10 in total. You should cover more or less the whole dish, but it should still look messy and bumpy.

6/ Sprinkle with the flaked almonds (you won’t see any on my cake because I forgot them!) and the demerara sugar.

7/ Bake for 25-20 min until the crust is golden. Serve warm with ice-cream or cream. If you made it early, just warm it up gently (120°C) in the oven while you eat the main course.

Recipe adapted from British Chef Rachel Green: http://www.rachel-green.co.uk/

PS: I suffer from the Burnt Cake Great Malediction. I do have a timer and an oven thermometer, but I still manage to forget most of my cakes in the oven until they burn! Hopefully you don’t suffer from my “condition” and your cobbler should be just a little …lighter in colour ;-)

The taste buds seasons (Lentils salad)

Different seasons call for different foods. 

In the Autumn, we like them soft.  While watching the mushrooms growing in the rain, we pour double cream over our pasta, and sauce on the meat that was grilled until few weeks ago. We now spread butter on our toasts before jamming them.

In Winter, we like them smooth. Our gums are as soft as raclette cheese, bacon rashes sliding down our throat directly to our stomach. Our teeth are now permanently protected by a permanent layer of cassoulet's duck fat.

In Spring, we like them crispy. We wake our taste buds up adding dashes of lemon juice to our salads. We sharpen our teeth on crunchy bread just coming out of the oven and onto juicy apples. 

In Summer, we like them crunchy. We now enjoy raw the vegetables that were once cooked and mashed. Compotes are over, time has come for fruit salads. We make faces biting in fresh rhubarb and we pinch our nose biting in ice-cream.

Puy lentils salad

What I like the most in rice or pulses salads is pack them with lots of fresh vegetables, all very finely chopped so that all the ingredients are more or less of the same size and the flavours get mixed up. This salad is all about what I love in summer : crunchy and very fresh.  

A for the British twist to this French-looking salad, I made a thaï-style dressing. Logical, isn't it?

Ingredients

250g of dried puy lentils

2 tomatoes

1 small handfull of radishes

2 celery branches
1/2 chilli (of any color)

1 pepper ( of any color)

1/2 red onion

2 ou 3 spring onions

A big bunch of parsley

Ingredients for the dressing
Soy sauce

Lemon or lime juice

Olive oil

1/ Cook the lentils according to pack instructions. Rince them under running cold water when draingin them (to cool them down)
 

2/ Very finely chop all the vegetables and the parley

 

3/ In a big bowl, mix the lentills and all vegetables

 

4/ For the dressing, only one instruction : freestyle!
The soy sauce will brings salt, the lemon/lime juice will enhance all ingredients flavours, the oil will soften the tangyness of the dressing (you don't want to soften it too much though. So oil is actually not compulsory and if you use some, go easy on it)

Of course, you can swap lentils by pearl barley, quinoa, rice, etc

God bless Anna and her guilty pleasures (Scones)

I used to picture Great Britain as a nation of ladies and gentlemen, drinking tea all day with their little fingers in the air, making jokes that I wouldn’t understand. Afternoon tea was a mystery to me. I just knew it involved tea and cakes, so it had to be wonderful. 
I did a bit of reseach...

We owe afternoon tea to Anna, the 7^th Duchess of Bedford, who was tired of starving every afternoon, waiting for dinner time to come (at that time, British aristocrats only had 2 meals a day: breakfast and dinner). Enjoying a snack of tea, sandwiches and cakes made by her cook, poor Anna felt lonely. So she decided she would invite friends to join her the next day. 
Before she knew it and summer was over, Anna had set a new trend and all the fashionable society was now hosting afternoon teas in London.  

From the old fashioned tea set to the scones and homemade jam, I love afternoon tea. It's like playing doll, but better because you get to eat real cakes! If you make the cakes yourself, it's even better!

I recently treated myself to an afternoon tea baking class with Caroline Hope (http://www.teaandscones.org.uk) .

Caroline took our little group on a three hour hands-on baking session. We baked 4 delicious kinds of traditional cakes, such as Victoria Sandwich and Lemon Drizzle Cake, as well as plain and savoury scones.  
Not just scones actually, the best scones I have had in my life. (I obviously did eat a few of them to make sure I had not given this distinction too lightly). 



Mini Victoria Sandwich

Frosting our mini coffee cakes (See gentlemen, baking classes are also for boys!)



Scones (plain and variations)

Ingredients

200g plain flour

4 tsp baking powder

50g cold butter, diced

½ teaspoon salt

150ml full fat milk at room temperature

1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar

1 tbsp caster sugar

Make the scones

1. Preheat the oven to 220 deg C.

2. Place the teaspoon of lemon juice/vinegar into the milk.

3. Sieve the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt into a large bowl.

4. Drop the butter cubes into the flour. With your fingertips rub the butter into the flour until there are no lumps of butter.

5. Make a well into the ‘crumb’ mixture and pour in the milk. It should have a few lumps, a bit like yoghurt.

6. Cut and fold the mixture with a large palette knife until combined and make a soft loose ball. If you find the mixture is very sticky just sprinkle in some more flour.

7. Scoop up the soft dough ball and place on a floured surface.

8. Pat down the ball until it is about 2 to 3 cm thick

9. Cut out the scone shapes with a glass and place the shapes onto a floured baking tray.

10. Once you have finished cutting out the shapes, roll up the remaining dough into a ball and repeat the process until all used up.

11. If desired, paint the top of the raw scones with milk or beaten egg to create a glazed top.

12. Place in the hot oven for about 9 – 10 minutes until risen and golden brown. Check that the base of the scone is also a nice brown.

13. Cool and the serve with some good quality jam and either clotted cream, whipped cream or butter.

Savoury variations:

Stilton and Walnut – 75g stilton and 50g chopped walnuts

Cheddar cheese and parsley – 100g mature cheddar cheese and two tablespoons parsley

Sweet variations: 
100g of dried fruits (sultanas) and candied fruits (glacé cherries, chopped)
80g of chocolate chips

Chive and cheddar savoury scones



A scone as light as a cloud

Orange cake, coffee cake, victoria sandwich, lemon drizzle cake, scones...all made in only few hours

Orange cake

If you want to treat yourself to a delicious afternoon tea in stunning surroundings, go to The Wolseley ( http://www.thewolseley.com) in London. Supposedly the perfect place to spot stars. I did not spot anybody famous the few times I went there, but it might be because their scones are so good that I could not help myself but eating them with my eyes shut?

Today, I know that it is actually a French thing to drink tea with your little finger in the air, I am as sarcastic as my British friends... I think I am "on the other side"!