Happy May Day!

London and Laduree

or Macarons from the experts.

Last weekend I went into London. I love living somewhere where I can do that with such ease. Although not in any way a 'city girl', London is a city I adore for its beauty, complexity, history, and most of all its food! Obviously Laduree is Parisian, but the London branch on Picadilly is somewhere I've been planning to visit ever since I developed my recent macaron obsession.



Macaron heaven! My Mum and I bought a box of eight macarons between us, but the sheer range of flavours made it very tricky to choose four each. (Although the eye-watering price made it unlikely that we'd buy eight each!)



Finally we settled on: (from L-R) chocolate lime, salted butter caramel, orange blossom, rose, bergamot, lily of the valley, red fruits and coffee.



I am delighted to report that my attempts were pretty much spot-on compared to the 'real thing' - the exact same crumbliness, sweetness, creamy filling, etc. I'll be making these again (with added satisfaction now I know the price of the Laduree ones!) I'm not sure I'll manage the sheer range of flavours, but I have some more ideas now. Watch this space...



I kept the box and bag too. Divine.

Some more highlights of the day - Fortnum and Mason.



Lunch in Borough Market. A Bacon, Egg and Bubble Bap from Maria's Market Cafe.




And Evensong at St Paul's Cathedral sung by the St John Singers, with whom Rob and I used to sing when we lived in Salisbury. The choir sounded absolutely superb. The acoustic is amazing - it must be a fantastic place in which to sing.



Sunlight glinting off St Paul, looking as if he's caught in the act of blessing the cranes.

Eggs of all shapes and sizes

My parents came to stay for a few days last week. On their way here they stopped at my aunt and uncle's farm and came away with a dozen fresh eggs, collected from the hens that roam freely around the farm and garden. And wow... it's enough to make you want to keep chickens! I put one of the eggs into my regular box of 'large' eggs, which kind of made me think that people who sell eggs are labelling them wrongly. I suppose they're keeping all the huge eggs for themselves!



I almost expected to crack this monster open and find a baby ostrich or something inside. But no ostrich, just two gloriously yellow yolks.



I didn't want to bake cakes with these eggs, I wanted to taste them in their full unadulterated glory, so plumped for a simple omelette. I spent years thinking that I didn't really like omelette, but I have recently become a fan. They're so quick and easy. Plain is fine, but grated cheese lifts them to another level, as does the addition of whatever veg is in the fridge. I had some slivers of spring onion left over from the crispy duck we had eaten earlier in the week, so I just sauteed them and folded the omelette around them and with a liberal sprinkling of Maggi seasoning the meal was complete. Simple and delicious. I just loved the sunny yellow; positively spirit-lifting.



Another egg-related subject that is lifting my spirits right now is the multitude of new life appearing on our local canal. The canal itself is disused, but is a haven for wildlife and waterfowl, as well as being the most wonderful walk, practically right outside our door. Look carefully as you walk along the towpath and nests are visible everywhere - ducks, moorhens, swans, dabchicks and coots.



And first out of the eggs this year were the coots! And they call baby swans ugly... they're positively supermodels compared to this lot! However, they are pretty cute with their punky hairstyles, and their parents obviously love them - this pair attentively fed each of the six chicks as I threw them bread.



More Spring-related photos coming soon I'm sure. This season really is England at its very best. I'm glad to live here.

Lamb - Cute and Tasty

Thank heavens that lambs grow out of that 'unbearably cute' phase pretty quickly, otherwise I could never again eat my favourite meat. But cute or not, I always think that sheep have a very nice time. They're not intensively reared, trapped in restrictive pens like chickens and pigs can be, they eat grass, they have what seems to be a simple and carefree life in the fields. A meat to eat with a relatively clear conscience?

Last week was spent in the Lake District, and the fields were full of baby lambs. I think Rob was getting a bit sick of my constant exclamations of "oooh! Little lambs!!!" They were everywhere. I really should have stopped with the excitement, but they just got me every time.

Despite this overdose of cute, I managed to tuck in to a tasty plateful of lamb 3 times during the week...

We were staying in a cottage in the village of High Lorton, and a mere 10 minute walk away was this excellent pub in Low Lorton, the Wheatsheaf. Good food, reasonable prices, great beer on tap, nice ambience, unpretentious - what more could you want in a village pub? (And free books too! They were having a clear-out, I picked up a couple of top quality retro cookbooks to add to my collection). Both Rob and I had the 'Wheatsheaf Lamb' that you can see on the menu. Melt-in-the-mouth tender, with a tasty sauce - although I always prefer a little more gravy with my meat.

Later on in the week we drove to the Kirkstile Inn in Loweswater. This small hotel has become justifiably famous in the area - we had to book a few days in advance just to get a table in the atmospheric bar, the only place worth sitting in in this cosy pub (I don't know about you, but I can't bear the sterile ambience of the 'Family Room' invariably found at the back of a pub, or what is often the style-free zone of the dreaded 'conservatory'. I want to be by the coal fire. And by the bar). The food here was also great value and great tasting - once again I went with the shoulder of lamb, slow-roasted for 4 hours, and this time swimming in rich gravy. The beers, brewed on site, were superb. I was really glad we'd made the effort to book.

We arrived home in Buckinghamshire on Easter Eve and whipped the shoulder of lamb out of the freezer ready for Easter Day! You'd think I'd be sick of it, but not a bit of it. The shoulder is my favourite cut of lamb. Fatty and hard to carve if roasted incorrectly, but done right it's a moist and tender meat that literally falls off the bone. I got the idea of slow-roasting it from Nigella Lawson's gorgeous Lamb and Mint Salad, from Nigella Bites, probably the recipe that I have cooked most from that book. I now use a similar method to this for cooking a traditional Sunday roast lamb:

Slice an onion, placing it in the bottom of a large roasting tin, along with 4 or 5 bruised cloves of garlic (unpeeled) and a spring of rosemary. Place the shoulder of lamb on top and give a generous scattering of salt and pepper.

Pour in about half a pint of boiling water, then tent the tin with foil. Place in a slow oven - about 150C - for between 4 and 6 hours. But no need to worry about setting a timer - it's difficult to spoil the meat using this method!

Remove from the oven when you need to turn up the temperature for the roast potatoes, but place the lamb back in, foil removed, for the final 30-45 minutes before serving. This crisps up the gorgeous skin.

The lamb will have produced lots of wonderful sauce as its juices mix with the onion, garlic and rosemary, and the water will have stopped it burning. It will also have released lots of fat, which I always carefully pour off. What is left can be served as it is, as a flavourful gravy, or thickened slightly with cornflour if desired. The matter of gravy is a very personal one so I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do!

The lamb doesn't need carving, simply shredding slightly as it pulls easily from the bone.

With apologies to the little lambs...

Spring Happiness

After what has been the most gruelling week of my teaching career I am appreciating anew the joys of Spring! Ofsted is over (and we are pronounced 'good with outstanding features'!!), I survived - and even almost enjoyed - a residential trip with 29 children, and now there is only a week of term left before the 2 week Easter Break.

Here is what made me happy yesterday...

A long walk in the countryside on a crisp sunny day. I loved this road lined with ancient trees and golden daffodils.



Blossom on the trees and contented animals in the fields.



Our first attempt at vegetable gardening is off to a good start.



Relaxing in front of a real fire with a nice glass of red wine and a new cookery book - a fascinating mix of memoirs and recipes, stunningly presented in collage-style.



A husband who cooked the entire roast-beef dinner last night, including what were perhaps the best roast potatoes in the whole world! (The Yorkshire Pudding was incredible too!)



Jugs of flowers from the garden. I think the daffodils look wonderful in the blue jug, and the grape hyacinths (which are carpeting our front flowerbeds) are such a beautiful colour.



I hope you are all feeling the joys of Spring as well!

Donuts... Mmmmm!

Last weekend. A day in Oxford. Beautiful sunshine punctuated with heavy showers. What better place to escape from the rain?

I love that Krispy Kreme have changed the spelling in their tagline to read 'doughnuts' so as not to offend us on this side of the Atlantic! The coffee was goooood...

But the donuts? Divine!

Caramel Dream donut, the 'special'. I loved the generous amount of filling, and the chocolate icing, sprinkled lavishly with chocolate shavings.

Oooh La La!

In recent years I have begun to develop a fascination with macarons. Not the coconut-laden English macaroon, but the delicately-coloured, airy, meringue-like, cream-filled, crispy mouthful of heaven that is the classic French macaron. Who could fail to be enchanted by the sight of these beauties? This stack was snapped in Raymond Blanc's Oxford patisserie Maison Blanc, but it seems as though macarons are quietly invading our shores, with shops such as Laduree moving across the Channel, and macaron pyramids seen increasingly often in bakery windows.



Despite my fascination, I never really thought about making them myself. I have made Nigella's Pistachio Macarons (from How to Be a Domestic Goddess) several times and absolutely loved them. But there is no doubt that although they taste divine, they are a somewhat more 'rustic' version of the original. Or maybe that was just mine...

However, I have recently stumbled upon several blog posts about making macarons (here, here and here to be precise) and last week I decided that I was going to go for it.

Making macarons is not difficult, but there is no doubt that the whole process takes up quite a lot of 'brain space' (although again that might just be me...). I found myself obsessing over different recipes, buying hitherto unknown ingredients (egg-white powder?!) and planning the entire event days in advance. To be fair, some planning is definitely necessary as the consensus amongst macaron aficionados is that the egg whites need to be 'aged' before using, which simply means separating the eggs up to 3 days before you plan to bake. Fortunately we made a batch of ice-cream at the weekend which used some egg yolks, so I was able to set aside the whites for 48 hours.



I wanted a double filling - some kind of cream, and some kind of fruit - and I also wanted to make them in a pretty pastel colour. As I have some vibrantly purple blackberry and apple jam that I made last Autumn I decided to make this my theme. I coloured my meringue mixture with food colouring paste so as not to thin the mix too much, and then piped it into rounds.



I was nervous about getting the consistency right, but I guess I struck lucky this time as I managed to get 2 trays of well-near-perfect mauve domes of batter. I didn't bother taking a picture of the third tray... in the process of scraping out the bowl I had obviously knocked all the air from the batter so the last piping-bag full just dribbled out and the macarons spread into eachother in a delightfully messy, but decidedly un-Laduree style!



A couple of the macarons cracked a little in the oven, and a few of them browned very slightly too (next time I will cook them at a lower temperature for a bit longer) but most were fine, and had developed the distinctive macaron 'foot' at the base.



Once cooled, I sandwiched each pair together with the bramble and apple jam - making sure to squidge at least one whole blackberry into each one - and a white chocolate ganache that I had made by simply melting some white chocolate with a splash of cream. Filling them is a delicate job, so I warmed the ganache slightly to make it easier to spread without cracking the macarons.



Then I just sat back and admired them. Pride may be a deadly sin, but I couldn't help feeling just a little bit proud of these.



They are so beautiful, I couldn't resist indulging in a little food-posing... how lovely they look with my purple tulips!



And look, they go well with blue hyacinths too!



And how do they taste? Gorgeous. Crispy on the outside, deliciously squidgy on the inside. I couldn't be more pleased. My mind is already buzzing with ideas for other flavours and colours... watch this space.

There are lots of macaron recipes out there as a quick Google search will testify, but I went for a combination of two which seemed to work for me. Here is what I did:

3 large egg whites, aged
1tsp egg-white powder (I used Meriwhite)
1/2 tsp fine salt
50g granulated sugar (I used vanilla sugar)

200g icing sugar
110g ground almonds

In a bowl whip the egg whites, egg-white powder and salt to a foam using an electric-whisk, then gradually add the vanilla sugar until you obtain a glossy meringue. Add colouring paste if desired at this stage. Combine the almonds and icing sugar in a bowl and use a hand whisk to combine the two, breaking up any lumps. (You could also do this in a food processor, but I couldn't be bothered to add to the washing-up.) Add the sugary almond mix to the meringue, and fold it in confidently using a metal spoon. The whole process should only take a few strokes. I found the many hints and tips about the ideal consistency downright terrifying - it shouldn't be too firm otherwise you will get a 'beak' on top of the macarons, but too well-folded and the macarons will spread) so I erred on the side of too firm, figuring that I could always smooth the tops down when I had piped them (which as it happened was not necessary).

Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip with the batter and pipe small rounds onto lined baking sheets. Let the macarons sit for an hour or so to firm up slightly. Opinion is divided as to whether this is necessary, but I ended up letting mine sit uncooked for about 3 hours. Preheat the oven to 300F/150C - but I would lower this next time, to perhaps 250F/120C. Bake for 10-12 minutes, depending on their size. Let them cool completely before filling. Pipe or spoon some of your filling on one shell and sandwich with another one.

Makes about 50 macaron halves, so assume about 20 'perfect' sandwiched macarons, with a few mistakes which are just perfect for tasting!

Bon appetit!