The light at the end of the tunnel

Yes I can see it, what once was a pin hole is now the size of a crater. Wahooo!!! There are a total of 100 pages. All recipes have been written bar five. The photo pages are filling up nicely and it is looking good.

I have managed to swap my shift at work so that I can spend more time making dishes that need photographing. It is a blessing in disguise really and although I only work four shifts, the two I have done have absolutely wiped me out, not physically, but emotionally (Once a nurse always a nurse!!!). I made the Tomato pesto chicken yesterday but Ian and I were so tired we couldn't manage to get the energy to be creative and take the picture. We just wolfed it down with the left over tomato foccacia I made, which was my pizza dough gone wrong. (I had accidentally put too much water in the mix and it was way to soft, so I added some more olive oil and pushed garlic, tomato slices and basil into the top and it turned out pretty good).

I'm going to have a pastry day soon, I want to try and make the perfect pastry for my chocolate tart. I made my Grandma's but I found it baked too hard, it was more like a biscuit. Once I find the perfect sweet pastry I can start to experiment with different pie fillings too. I have never made a key lime pie so I know that will be on the cards and I also want to try to make creme patissiere. I need to expand my dessert menu. Ian once told me that when he went to Florida he had asked for a slice of key lime and they gave him the whole pie to finish off!!! I think he ended up having it as a dessert for the whole week. I may re-create that for him but on a much smaller scale. I love it when people come round for dinner and they are given their own individual pudding. It makes it look so much nicer and there are no arguments as to who has the bigger serving.

The future

After a productive two days in the kitchen and with the book nearly finished (when I say that I  mean well on the way, at least 75% completed) I was wondering what I could do next. I still want to keep the blog going and obviously I need to promote the book, so I was thinking of changing the mission of the blog. As I have had you follow me in my experience of writing the book through the highs and the lows I have now decided to share with you my continuous cooking accomplishments (and failures). Lets concentrate on the former though!!

Since writing the blog I have had people offer their recipes and give advice on what foods compliment each other which has enhanced my knowledge and added to my creativity. I would love to share some recipes with you via the blog and yes I will be writing recipes out. In the past I have given little away but times are a changing and I need to be more interactive with you. I would love to gain some feedback on what you think of the recipes and how they turned out for you. (Maybe another book could be published in the future based on the dishes you most like). Ultimately I want it to be more interactive for both you and me.

I am slowly making changes to the blog and have added  flickr photo stream so you can visualize my dishes and maybe have a go at re-creating them yourselves. I am still in the process of building my profile, so please be patient with me. As we wind down with this year I plan to see next year in with great enthusiasm in regard to my passion for food and I want to share it with you.

Todays Fun

Well I woke up at a stupid ungodly hour to find that no amount of tossing and turning would get me comfortable to get back to sleep, so I hauled my body out of bed, turned on my laptop and began to type my remaining recipes. I can honestly tell you that all the recipes are in from breakfast up until the desserts, this section has only just begun.

I have had the desserts on my mind for a while and have been testing them out checking that my quantities of the ingredients are correct. Today I plan to make my Chocolate Tart, I am going to be using my Grandma's German pastry recipe which is to die for. I must admit though I am not much of a pastry girl. I often find it to claggy and hence never really make it, but this pastry is outstanding. It is buttery yet light and sweet. I remember my Mum asking my Grandma for the recipe, she was making mince pies for Christmas and Grandma's always tasted so much nicer (Sorry Mum!!). Mum obviously agreed otherwise she wouldn't have asked for the recipe, since then Mum's mince pies are just as good as Grandma's.

I have yet to make this pastry as I always used to make a cheesecake base for my chocolate tart, so this is a little experiment. I have been warned though!! this pastry is very short so knowing me I will either make way too much or not enough. The latter in more than likely. The other slight worry I have is that I have to convert the recipe from ounces into cups, which shouldn't be a problem as I use an online converter, however when I did this for my sisters special occasion cookies, I ended up with a baking sheet of uncooked goo. I may well be checking a few online conversion charts. I do not want to screw this one up, It is one of my favorite desserts.

Restaurant quality!!!!

Ian and I have date nights every two weeks where we do something special together and get out of the old humdrum monotony of routine life. Last night was a toss up between the Lions game or going out for dinner. The lions lost (on more than two occasions!) and we chose right. We found a fantastic French themed restaurant called CRU, not far from home ( www.cru.ca ) that served fresh sophisticated meals. The menu consisted of a selection of small plates which could be served as starters or entrees and a fixed price menu which again gave you 3-4 options for each course. It was wonderful. The atmosphere was chilled and relaxed and the service was outstanding. Each dish was was oozing with taste. I loved the way their menu was set out, it worked so well for the chef. Most restaurants have a huge menu where there is so much choice that  the quality of the food becomes compromised. At CRU though high quality was maintained and thought went into preparing every dish that was presented to us. The best compliment I received (which would be taken as a negative by the restaurant) was when Ian said my pork belly was tastier than theirs. I was smiling from ear to ear. Watch out CRU!!!

The presentation of the food has given me further inspiration on how to set up food photos for the book. I love to keep food simple and presentation is the key. Why spend the time cooking it ensuring it tastes so good to have no thought go into the presentation. The photo is marketing your food, you want it to look appetizing and desirable. I always like to serve food on a plain colored plate, rather than an over decorated plate. Accents can be added to the table to get the desire effect. For example using a different colored base plate and then adding a plain food plate on top. Let the food do the talking

Preserving food

For a while now I have been thinking that of ways to preserve food. I have made jams before, but I would love to try canning and drying foods. In the future I plan to grow my own vegetables so learning to preserve food will be beneficial to me. I have read and watched programs on how to to preserve some foods but now I have to do it for real. My only concern is once canned or preserved how long will they last for. I suppose I will find this out with experience.

I am going to start with canning my baked beans and tomato sauce and if we catch any fish on our adventures I will have a go at canning them too (All our fish so far have been way to small to eat). I know that I will need to purchase a pressure cooker to help seal the cans so that will be the next outlay. A friend at work tried canning for the first time this year, so I shall have to ask her what issues she had if any. I would also like to try making my own salami, but I will start of with the canning first.

I have be experimenting with making oven roasted tomatoes, it is such a great way of using up excess tomatoes. My sister gave me a great recipe for chicken in a tomato pesto sauce and I have wanted to make my own tomato pesto for a while. I often make basil pesto, so I knew that I could adopt the same principles for the tomato pesto. Last week I headed down to Granville Island and picked up a huge bag of tomatoes from the discount bin for a dollar. I threw away any soft split tomatoes, but to be honest there was probably about two that were unsuitable. With the others I cut them in half, coated them in oil, sprinkled them with a little sea salt and  spread them out on a baking sheet before slow roasting them in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for 8 hours. Yes I know that is a long time but I did not want them to burn. I allowed them to shrink to half there size and become wrinkly. I originally thought that they would have a chewy consistency throughout, a little like the store bought sun dried tomatoes but my tomatoes turned out chewy but moist and the flavor was to die for. They were sweet like candy and the tomato flavor was intense, perfect for a tomato pesto.

Tomato Pesto

20 Halves Oven roasted tomatoes

2 tbs Tomato paste

Handful of Basil

Parmesan

Olive oil

Pine nuts

Garlic

S&P

(When using these ingredients add them to your personal taste) Firstly blitz the tomatoes and strain if there is too much juice present. Place back into the blender and add the remaining ingredients,. Use the oil to thin the mixture to a nice consistency and add salt and pepper to taste. Et voila. This can keep in the fridge for up to a week. Its great to use as spreads  as well as in pasta.

Christmas

That dreaded question came two days ago. What are we doing for Christmas? This related to buying gifts for our relatives in the UK. Originally I was going to give our relatives a copy of the cook book I am developing, however this is not going to happen as I have much more work to do. Our other back up plan also would not work. When we lived in England we always laid on the Christmas buffet, usually on Christmas eve, where family would enjoy a feast of sumptuous food. This was our back up plan. Ian's whole family would attend, even his sister and brother in law who live in Germany. The pressure was on (there was no pressure), I loved it. I would always plan the buffet months before Christmas. (I am in that process now). On our first Christmas buffet Ian was in charge of the alcohol and me the food. I would tell him what was on the menu and he would match the wine and liquor. There was champagne, a selection of wines, whiskey, brandy and port. Excellent. I served two platters,  the first being roasted ham with a maple and orange glaze served with pigs in blankets and the second was roasted trout with a selection of seafood. My father used to provide us with the trout as he is a keen fisherman, so our freezers were always filled with this edible delight. There were other plates of Stilton cheese, balsamic glazed onions, baby tomatoes and baskets of bread. My mums fruity Christmas cake was always served at the buffets and often taken home by Ian's parents. You can make buffets as simple or complicated as you like, the second buffet was a lot less elaborate but just as tasty.

When we used to visit my parents for Christmas, I  would always get involved in the kitchen and assist mum. Although mum would have fully planned the Christmas dinner, we would always discuss what we would serve. She would always ask my opinion and often the starter would change from the original idea. I love to eat my Mums Christmas dinners and one year my brother in law ate two of mums Christmas dinners.

Anyway this does not answer the original question. What are we doing for Christmas?, that I don't know. In regard to friends I would love to invite them around for a Christmas buffet. Roll on Christmas.

November

I can not believe it is November already. Where has this year gone? I started the book project in August and now it is nearly the end of the year. The next big event is Christmas. I am not even going to start talking about Christmas, I think I will have to dedicate a whole post to Christmas nearer the time. I can tell that we are heading into winter though, all the gorgeous autumnal colors are beginning to fade and bare branches are beginning to show.  Our food menu at home is also showing signs of winter, there are less salads appearing on the menu and more comfort food is starting to show. This is the best time of year for me, in fact to be honest every season seems to be the best time of year for me. Each season brings new foods, recipes and tastes. I love them all!!!

Since my last post I have been battling with the front cover, it is not turning out as well as I had anticipated. I planned to use a wrap around photo, however the photo is too short and if stretched the picture will be ruined. A little more work is needed. I may have to zoom in on the photo or use two separate photos for the front and the back cover. We will just have to see. I am also unsure of the title, I thought that I could use the blog title 'THIS IS IT' but then I quickly realized that that is Michael Jackson's movie title. Would I have copyright issues? and who am I compared to Michael Jackson. The pressures!!!!!

On a positive note though my poached pears turned out awesome, they were tender and sweet and the sauce made from the poaching liquor was divine. It wasn't too strong and it worked really well with the vanilla ice-cream. There was no real difference in taste between the pears. All the pears worked well, however the barlett pears did need to poach a little longer to get tender. I would advise to use the same pears if poaching a few at a time and keep turning the pears during the poaching period. This stops the flesh from oxidizing and turning a reddish brown color.