this & that
It’s Daring Cooks reveal week.
Okay, it was actually Daring Cooks reveal day on the 14th, but I’m late. Sue me. Anyways...
Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.
You can find the recipes here if you're interested.
I made the trout pate, mostly because a) I ran out of time, and b) the ingredients were easy to get. Mostly. Instead of trout I substituted sole, and I used black pepper instead of green. It was also the first time I’d cooked and deveined raw shrimp or flambéd anything, which was heaps of fun.
I was a little disturbed when the sole and shrimp came out of the blender with the consistency of instant mashed potatoes, but I poked it into a little loaf pan and threw it into the oven anyway. It came out deliciously peppery.
Baking the baguettes was more of a challenge. I covered the starter with a tea towel instead of saran wrap, but it’s so dry here that it didn’t rise properly. The end result was sort of... doughy and hard... but the loafs crackled deliciously when they came out of the oven.
What I should have done was talk to my downstairs baker neighbour beforehand. While sharing lobster & cream cheese wontons in my kitchen the day after, she mentioned that putting the rising dough in the oven with a bunch of pans of water would really help make things light and fluffy. Ah, hindsight!
Also, I started a blog under my pseudonym over here. I'll try to keep both up, especially since I've had this one for so bloody long, but the other might be worth checking every once and a while for writing updates. If you're interested. :)
Okay, it was actually Daring Cooks reveal day on the 14th, but I’m late. Sue me. Anyways...
Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.
You can find the recipes here if you're interested.
I made the trout pate, mostly because a) I ran out of time, and b) the ingredients were easy to get. Mostly. Instead of trout I substituted sole, and I used black pepper instead of green. It was also the first time I’d cooked and deveined raw shrimp or flambéd anything, which was heaps of fun.
I was a little disturbed when the sole and shrimp came out of the blender with the consistency of instant mashed potatoes, but I poked it into a little loaf pan and threw it into the oven anyway. It came out deliciously peppery.
Baking the baguettes was more of a challenge. I covered the starter with a tea towel instead of saran wrap, but it’s so dry here that it didn’t rise properly. The end result was sort of... doughy and hard... but the loafs crackled deliciously when they came out of the oven.
What I should have done was talk to my downstairs baker neighbour beforehand. While sharing lobster & cream cheese wontons in my kitchen the day after, she mentioned that putting the rising dough in the oven with a bunch of pans of water would really help make things light and fluffy. Ah, hindsight!
Also, I started a blog under my pseudonym over here. I'll try to keep both up, especially since I've had this one for so bloody long, but the other might be worth checking every once and a while for writing updates. If you're interested. :)