Windy’s Food Corner

Lost Momentum

Well, how should I begin…

As mentioned here and here, we are trying to sell our house with no success so far. Our estate agent phoned us yesterday and basically reported that the housing market was not good lately. But she asked us to hold on and did not give up. My next hope is to get a better paid job. I’ve been searching for a new job within my organisation for some time; however, not much has come up. I have applied for a few and so far I have not been shortlisted. Those two points alone have already made me feel a bit depressed at the moment, and somehow affects my creativity in cooking. I am still trying to eat healthy food and get the good quality meat where possible. However, I just didn’t give much thought on what to cook lately.

Anyway, at least the summer is coming, seems. I know that the PYO strawberries will be available soon, something that I’ve been looking forward to. Once I have them, I would like to try Jamie Oliver’s strawberry jam, Peter G’s Strawberry and Mascarpone Tarts and Fruit Pizza Mini Tarts from Kristen.

Although I have a big ugly “for sale” sign in my front garden, at least the weatherman has given the wrong prediction again: the sun has come out today and there has been no rain!

Feel like having a Tart?

Tarts: of course, I don’t mean girls who are always available to men. The tarts that I’m after are some lovely edible tarts which are not much effort to make.

I’ve met a new friend recently at work; we see each other sometimes during our lunch break. In the beginning, she brought her lunch with her, which looked very tasty. Then, she suggested to take turns to make lunch for each other. I really like the idea; it’s not just because I don’t need to spend too much money on the boring sandwiches, but I can let my creative juice flow when it’s my turn. Hence, when it was my turn, I made some savoury tarts for both of us.

The main ingredient you need for the tarts is the individual puff pastry round. I used the frozen one – just make sure it is fully defrosted. Then you can mix and match with any veg/meat you like. For example, for one, I used a big flat mushroom with Spanish chorizo sausage, and for another, I cooked and mashed some cauliflower and mixed with bacon. Make sure the cauliflower mixture is completely cool before transferring onto the puff pastry, then pinch and seal the folds.

All you need to do next is to place the tarts on a greased baking tray and put the tray into the oven, preheated to 200C. The tarts will be ready in 20 minutes. When they are cooked, there may be a lot of water in the mushroom one; however, the mushroom will absorb the water as it cools. They are especially nice while still warm, but they also made a lovely lunch for my friend and me.

(PS I would like to submit this lunch idea to the ‘Wholesome Lunchbox Event’, hosted by Margot.)

Rhubarb and Apple Crumble

Last weekend my husband and I went to visit his family. His dad loves gardening and grows veg in his back garden. Every time I go to his house, I would take a look at his garden. I saw some rhubarb laying on the ground, and he has kindly given me some.

Rhubarb – I’m still not sure it is a veg or fruit, but I know it is a plant. Also, the leaves are toxic and people eat just the stem. In the UK, people normally use it to make a crumble dessert or pie. So after we got home, I bought a couple of cooking apples and made the rhubarb and apple crumble:

5-6 sticks of rhubarb
2 cooking apples
1 lemon
2-3 teaspoons sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon powder (optional)

Crumble:
200g flour
100g cold butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat oven to 190C

To make the crumble, rub the flour, baking powder, and butter (cut in small cubes) in a bowl using your fingers. When the texture becomes sand-like, add the brown sugar and mix quickly.

Cut the apple and rhubarb into small chunks and put it into a pie dish. Drizzle some lemon juice and add a bit of the lemon zest and sugar on top of the fruit. Then put the crumble mixture on top, and put the dish into the oven for 40-45 minutes. Serve with cream or warm custard.

The picture above was with some warm cinnamon custard. Basically I’ve forgotten to add the cinnamon into the crumble, so we added a bit of the cinnamon into the custard instead. I would like to enter this to the Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Wandering Chopsticks this week.

Fragrant Smell

I will be one year ‘younger’ tomorrow; my husband has baked me a blueberry and cinnamon birthday cake!

Right now, the house has a lovely smell of cinnamon, and I can’t wait to eat the cake. When we wrote the shopping list yesterday, we realised that the baking powder we had has passed its expiry date. I couldn’t believe that I haven’t baked a cake for such a long time. I have been wanting to try several cake recipes myself for a while – so when my husband suggested baking me a cake, I couldn’t wait to give him some of the recipes, from which he could choose.

Anyway, I never want to have meal at home on my birthday; I’ve booked a table at a Spanish restaurant for tomorrow night as I miss paella and tapas so much. The only downside about birthday (besides my age) is that I will need to take some treats for my colleagues when I go back to work on Tuesday. I understand that in the UK, the birthday girl/boy would bring cakes to work as a way to tell everyone that is his/her birthday, but I still can’t really get over this concept. As I don’t like to buy sweets from supermarket, I’m going to make breakfast bars and “coco pops” rice cakes, which I still don’t really know how to make! Oh well, my colleagues will be my guinea pigs then.

Portuguese Custard Tart

From Delia

I remember some weeks ago there was a food programme called Delia. I don’t know how well known she is internationally, but I guess a lot of British would have heard of her name, especially Norwich City Football fans.

Delia Smith OBE, age 66, has been in the cookery industry for around 45 years. Considering she is an experienced chef, I can’t believe how crap her programme is! She demonstrated how to ‘cheat’ at cooking. Unfortunately, unlike Nigella, most of her ‘cheating’ recipes were uninspiring (e.g. using canned mince instead of the fresh). Another UK celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay, even made an angry comment about her program. I guess that said it all.

However I did find one recipe of hers that was worthwhile - Portuguese Custard Tart. Mainly because this is one of the foods that I haven’t had since I moved to this country. Anyway, this is what I think:

• In her recipe, she uses crème fraiche, which is made out of heavy cream and sour cream. However, as it is a dessert (i.e. sweet), I would suggest to change it to double cream.

• After cooking the custard, you would need to cool it down before spooning it into the pastry. When I used crème fraiche, I had to wait for ages to cool but the custard was still a bit watery. It works much better when using double cream.

• She also suggested to use caramel sauce in her recipe. Trouble is, I don’t use caramel for my cooking, so I sprinkled some brown sugar on top before putting the tarts into the oven. They may not have a shiny glazed look, but they still tasted great.

One thing I totally agree with her is to eat it while it’s fresh. So, I’m glad that she has shown this recipe and am sure that I will make them more often.

Another Year…

Gosh! I have not been updating my blog for a while due to being busy with preparation for selling my house. Well, my house is on the market for almost two weeks, but the economy in the UK is not very good – only one couple viewed it so far… I just hope that the housing market will recover soon.

On the plus side, I can’t believe that this blog is already two years old! I will carry on cooking tasty but simple food and share my experiences with you. I normally update my blog during weekend, mainly because this is the only time I can sit in front of my computer doing whatever I like without worrying my colleagues giving me disapproving looks! I hope you will visit from time to time and share you thoughts.

I would like to say thanks to my following bloggers, who have been supporting me for the last year:

Tigerfish who I envy as she can eat the food that I terribly miss in the Far East
Chase, the sexy Queer Chef, who gonna get married soon
Eastcoastlife who I would like to meet in Singapore one day
Lovely girl aCey
Jenn, the Queen of Leftover (and congratulations on your marriage)
Margot with her amazing lunch box idea
Rose with her friend Jen
Peter from the Souvlaki for the Soul
Ben and Suanne – hope to visit you one day if I go to Vancouver…

I’m sure I have not mentioned all the people on my list, but I would like to say thank you for visiting my blog and may have even linked my blog somewhere in yours. Anyway, I will start blogging more often for a while… until we find someone who wants to buy our house (please happen soon) which might cause me to be too busy again…