Cailler Chocolate*

It was reading week last week and I took a trip home, via Paris where I participated in a macaron making class (more about that in another post), to see my mum and relax for a bit. Well, it was supposed to be relaxing. I actually zoomed around for the whole holiday and found myself in London 4 times!! The most unexpected visit also turned out to be one of my favourite days and a completely new experience. One of mum's friends passed along an invitation to a chocolate launch on the South Bank (Sea Containers's restaurant is very swish by the way).

The chocolate in question? Nestlé's prestigious swiss brand Cailler, now launching in the UK exclusively at Amazon. It's made at Maison Cailler near Broc and uses (unlike most chocolate companies) fresh milk in their  chocolates, not powdered. They even showed us a video about one of their cows, Gwendoline! All the milk is sourced from within a 20 mile radius of maison Cailler, which is a nice touch and helps to keep the brand close to home - apparently there are some locals who say you can taste the difference between the chocolates made in the summer and winter, when the cows eat different things. I think they must have insanely good tastebuds!

Things Are Finally Settling Down

I know it's been a long time since I wrote a post and I know that I keep apologising but things will get back to normal now and you'll get your regular dose of recipes again. I've just chosen all of my classes and I think I'm happy with them (having walked out of today's one half way through because the same subject made my cry in first year and switched it for a better class). Some are brilliant. like my writing techniques class - this week we had to write lonely hearts ads and last week it was acrostics - and some are straightforward and not too challenging - like my translation classes. My flat is also, mostly, behaving itself after a flood during a bad storm. Although I'm still trying to get the roof fixed, I'm beginning to understand that the French are unbelievably laid-back about water coming in through the roof and that if I ring every so often then hopefully it'll all get sorted before winter! The social aspect of uni is great - I've made plenty of friends - and I've even thrown my first baby dinner party (4 friends and lots of thai green curry). Here's to many more to come!

My friend from Manchester, Jed, was staying with me for a couple of weeks while he found himself a flat and one night I made the Hairy Biker's lemon chicken for us. Well, it was delicious and while it's very different to my favourite lemon chicken from Dim T in Winchester, it's got a punchy flavour without being cloyingly sweet and unhealthy. I've changed a couple of things around as I didn't think there was enough sauce but that the juice of 2 whole lemons would make it too sour (I was right - 1½ is about right but feel to add more if you want to).

The Last Month (Time Has Flown)

Last Sunday it was the first anniversary of this blog and I realised I hadn’t posted for a while due to a busy summer. Well, I’m going to rectify this today with  a catch up of my holidays. This might not be posted for a few days as I currently don’t have reliable internet but as soon as I can I promise to upload this! 

I last posted when I was in Sweden. We had a fantastic two weeks there and the food, well, it was brilliant. If you ever go to Stockholm then I recommend you eat at Oaxen Slip, which is on the same island as the ABBA museum (also worth a visit for the hilarity of it all. And the chance to pretend you’re part of the band). The menu is intended to be shared but you could quite easily have a plate each and just share the sides. We each chose a dish and then tried each others’. I had pork with spring onion butter and a charred lemon, so simple yet full of flavour. My family chose cod with hazelnuts, Swedish beef sausage, and a steak. All tasted fantastic. For me, the anticipated dessert, and the reason I chose the restaurant, having spotted it on Rocket and Squash’s instagram, was a salted caramel brownie with ice cream and sour cream. Boy, did it live up to expectations! The warm brownie was light and gooey with the sour cream being a perfect, if unusual, foil to the chocolate sweetness. 

Satay

My cousin's wife and their children came over to cook the other day* (you may remember them from when we made dumplings) and we made chicken satay. Charlie also demanded that we made bread so there was a quick detour for that to happen but ultimately we made some amazing satay that tasted just like the stuff I ate all the time when we went to Boat Quay or Chinatown in Singapore. Now, this isn't as much of a coincidence as it might seem - the cookbook author, Ghillie James, is an expat in Singapore. If you want little ones to help then juicing the limes with an electric juicer was deemed excellent fun, as was pressing the buttons on my mini processor (it's fairly noisy). Holding the hand held mixer to knead the bread definitely met with Charlie's approval - he loved the shape of the dough hooks but interestingly didn't want to touch the dough itself.

The recipe is quite straightforward but I'm not happy with the marinade for the chicken and want to tweak it using a satay recipe I previously used. Therefore I'm only going to give you the recipe for the sauce, with my changes, and will upload the marinade another time. When I can't be bothered to marinate, thread and grill the chicken I often just fry the chicken and cook some rice/noodles and peas and serve with this sauce on top. You could use beef, pork or prawns if you'd rather.

*Other week - I forgot to finish this before I went to Sweden (more on that next time) - sorry!

My First Roast Chicken

I tagged along on a trip to Bath with my mum on Saturday and marched around all the places I wanted to visit in under two hours while she had lunch. It was great but I wish I'd had longer! I bought the most beautiful 21cm chef's knife made by I O Shen - the swirls along the handle aren't just decorative but help with the weight and balance of the knife. Then, I visited the amazing Foodie Bugle and chatted to the lovely owners, Silvana and John-Paul de Soissons about their beautiful and eclectic selection of kitchenware for sale. I purchased a pretty tile to take photos against, which is something I've been after for a long time, along with a Falcon enamel pie dish (for 2 potion lasagne in Poitiers) and their first printed magazine - it started out being online. My third and last stop was Richard Bertinet's bakery for some focaccia and a quiche for my supper. Once there I also couldn't resist one of his recipe books that focused just on bread recipes - an excellent find as I have enough cookbooks already that are half bread and half cake!

School's Out For The Summer!

I'm a cook!!

I have a job! And a flat in France! And it's summer! And Very Hot! As you can probably tell, I'm excited and busy. First things first, I am moving to Poitiers in September for a year, as you may already know, and I went there with mum a couple of weeks ago to find somewhere to live. Well, we expected it to be really difficult but by some miracle we loved the first flat we saw and got that one. It's lovely and spacious and right in the centre of town. The weather on the weekend we were there was gorgeous, and there were some amazing markets that are on every day/week so I won't be short of ingredients for new recipes to share with you. You can see in the photo below what it was like.

Poitiers

Pizza Party

I'm packing up my flat at the moment, ready to move back home for the summer, but I thought I'd take a break and quickly write a new recipe for you. I'm going to really miss Manchester when I leave, which, for those of you who knew my feelings before I arrived, is quite surprising. Coming from a small town and then a very safe big city (Singapore) I thought crime ridden Manchester would leave me refusing to leave my room apart from to go to lectures to stay safe. Well, one thing I learnt quickly is that Manchester and Greater Manchester are different and if you're sensible and somewhat cautious (not waving your phone around on street corners etc) then it's a great place to live and study. Summer is looking very busy and then my next adventure begins - I am studying in Poitiers for a year so you will have some French produce orientated recipes to come, as well as many of my favourites.