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Beef Wellington

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 I have been practicing making Croissants and the puff pastry required for Beef Wellington uses the same folding technique so thought I'd make this for a dinner party at the weekend. The other reason is that we have several pieces of fillet in our freezer that need eating. Frying steak for a dinner party is a bit of a hassle since you have to do it when the guests have arrived, beef  Wellington is all prepared beforehand. The problem is that the fillet is in pieces so I thought I would make individual sized Wellingtons. I have always found cutting Beef Wellington rather difficult and now Parkinson's makes it more so.  The crispy pastry it breaks off as you cut through the meat and you end up having to reassemble everything on the plate.  I haven't cooked the Wellingtons yet so I don't know if my adaptions have worked but I will write about my reflections and adaptions anyway and edit afterwards. The recipe is quite complex but there are 3 stages. 1. The pastry Before...
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Chorley cakes

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 This doesn't quite reach the classic status of my previous posts, croissants in fact the chorley cake simply oozes humbleness. My dad liked these and so do I (my sister, Sarah does too), whenever I am in a British supermarket I put a packet of these in my shopping basket.  The other day I had an uncontrollable desire to have a chorley cake and we has some currants left over from the chistmas pudding ingredients so I looked up a recipe. There are several recipes on the net and I chose one but disagreed with one thing. The recipe says to paint the cakes with eggwash but the chorley cake is white not brown. The pastry appears to be slightly underbaked.  The one in the photo is a little too brown and a bit to thick. Here is a shop bought one.  Ingredients 100g flour 50g butter 1/2 a teaspoon of baking powder a pinch of salt some currants  a bit more butter sugar  Method Make pastry in the normal way but add baking powder. This isn't normal but gives a lighter ...
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Pasta

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 Pasta (Tagliatelle) I got a pasta machine as a leaving present from Thomas Rotherham college but have never been totally satisfied with the results. Now I have time to perfect my technique and make pasta hat I can share with my friends. I haven't made many batches so far but have already learnt some important lessons.    Small batches The recipe is simple 100g of flour to 1 egg. The flour is supposed to be OO or tipo or something special but I am just using normal plain flour. I will try experimenting with different flour when I get a chance to visit the asian food shop in the nearest biggish town Førde. Yesterday I used 300g and 3 eggs but by the time I got to the end of the rolling and cutting the dough had started to dry out. This morning I use 100g of flour and  the dough was fine. If you need more pasta you can be mixing the dough for the next round as you roll and cut the first. I use a dough hook to mix the dough but it is very stiff. To get the dough started...
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Croissants

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Ingredients   2 cups of flour  1 teaspoon of sugar  ¼ teaspoon of salt  Half a packet of dried yeast (miss out the yeast and you have puff pastry)  Just over half a cup of hot water mixed with milk (half of each)  140g unsalted butter (I use Norwegian butter (smør) which is 83% fat) The butter should be in the fridge.   Mixing  Put all the powdery ingredients into a mixer fitted with a dough hook (I have a Kitchen Aid, highly recommended). Mix the powders with the hook for a short time then add the warm water/milk. The addition of liquid should cause the powders to clump together. If it doesn’t then add a bit more water. Continue mixing for about 5-10 minutes. The dough should change from stringy to smooth like play doh.   Rising   The dough must now be left to rise to about double its size. This is difficult to judge if the dough is in a ball but easy if you put it in a cylindrical or straight sided container. Cover the top with a...
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