Friday 20 March 2015

Squid Ink Pasta with Seafood in White Wine Sauce

So I wanted to:
- make ink squid pasta with actual squid,
- add some big prawns (gambas),
- try to make a white wine sauce.

Here's the result:



You can't see much of the white wine sauce (I only added it to the pasta then piled the rest on top, since the pot and pans I used were not big enough to stir everything through), but it worked very well!

I used this this recipe for it, and I flavoured it with shallots, sundried tomatoes, oregano and lemon olive oil (also a few drops of Asian fish sauce and mango vinegar).

I also added some leek, green peas and yellow bell pepper. It was really nice:)


Thursday 19 March 2015

Lemon Cheesecake

About a year and a half ago, I promised Kristof I'd teach him to make cheesecake, and I only got around to it this week-end (I know, shame on me!!!).

We used the lemon cheesecake recipe I always use, and which always produces a seriously yummy result (this is THE lemon cheesecake, at least according to my standards!).
The recipe is online here, but for some reason their site was down while I was shopping for ingredients (a bit of a "gaaahhh!!!" moment) so I'm posting it here too (I figure there are less chances of both sites being down).
 
Ingredients
 
For the biscuit base

        10 digestive biscuits or 20 dinosaur biscuits (which makes it even better, just use the ones without chocolate)
        75g melted butter
        1 tbsp clear honey

For the filling

        750g mascarpone cheese
        juice and zest of 2 lemons
        200g white powder sugar 

Preparation

  1. Brush the bottom of your springform cake tin with some of the melted butter (this is totally optional since this is a no-bake cheesecake). 
  2. Crush the biscuits and tip them into a bowl, add the melted butter and honey and stir until well combined. The butter and honey are what will hold the biscuits crumbs together.


    Unfortunately I can't promise that no dinosaur biscuits were harmed while making this cheesecake!


  3. Tip the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin. Level it and tap the whole surface repeatedly to make it as compact as you can. Chill in the fridge while making the filling.


  4. For the filling, mix the mascarpone cheese, lemon juice and zest and sugar together in a bowl.





    Do not over-mix or the mascarpone will become runny (if that happens your only hope is adding gelatine like I had to do for my caramel version, which doesn't impair the taste, but of course the texture is completely different!).
  5. Spoon the mixture into the tin on top of the chilled biscuit mixture and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. 


  6. When ready to serve, unclasp the springform ring and ease the cheesecake out.



    And enjoy:)

Sunday 15 March 2015

I can haz purl stitch!

I've started teaching myself to knit a good two years ago, in which time I've made... hmm... three scarves.
Even less impressive is that I never managed to get my head around the purl stitch... Until recently that is...

I Hereby Proudly Present My First Successful Attempt at Purl Stitch:

The idea behind this was to make a scarf that wouldn't "grow" too much, as my first scarf (that I still wear all the time) is now a good bit longer than it was originally (I could wrap it twice around my neck, now after 3 times it's still a bit loose). My mum said it's normal with garter stitch...

It's long enough to almost touch the floor when hung from a bar stool!

The thing is, stockinette stitch has another problem: it curls up on itself!

So I still ended up frogging (= unraveling) it and starting again in garter stitch. Ah well...
At some point I'll master more stitches;)