Colombia

A year ago last Sunday, I sat in the car of my then boyfriend, crying my eyes out over our imminent break up. Only we weren’t actually breaking up for another fortnight / until he had made up his mind. He just had the courtesy to give me a heads up on that particular day.

This past Sunday was a total contrast – I was on a plane home from the most magical holiday in Colombia. I feel relaxed, happy and most importantly, completely healthy.

I’ll write more about this beautiful country over the next couple weeks, but for now here are a few photos:

Thank you Colombia and my two wonderful travel buddies for a pretty spectacular 10-days!

Col

Lago d’Iseo, Italy

So here we are almost half way through the year already, and here I am at yet another fresh start with this writing thing. This time I was just prevented from my online scribblings by an unbelievably old and decrepit laptop. But now I have a beautiful shiny new laptop with nothing to slow it down. A little while back, a bunch of us went out to Lago d’Iseo in Lombardia, Italy for a 21st birthday (I know right!?!?)
It had been a little while since all of us school lot had been together, what with everyone on placement years and at various universities across the UK. It was the perfect long weekend of laughter, wine and (far too much) food. These are some of my favourite pictures from the trip, and quite simply make me want to get my travel on again!

 

 

 

You see that hill in front of the mountain? (mini mountain, I should say) That’s Monte Isola. There’s a chapel at the top. Our friend suggested a little jaunt up to the top of the hill to see what this chapel was all about, and to admire the (admittedly stunning) views. However she did not mention a two hour, 600m above sea level, sheer shingly path of a climb. I was wearing a dress and strappy sandals. One of the guys was wearing a suit (!) and leather soled shoes. The girl who suggested the climb was wearing cloth moccasins. So you could definitely say none of us were all that prepared. And it was one of the best, and easily the funniest, things we did that weekend.

We made it half way!

 

Bear in mind here that it’s March, and this lake is fed with the snow melt from the Alps. It was warm enough to be in short sleeves and sandals on the shore, but definitely not warm enough to be as brave as these guys. I learned my lesson in Poland a few years ago.

Where have you travelled to most recently? Where will your feet take you next?

Cakey Lacey Things with Karolina Laskowska

Last weekend was so much fun. It was taken up completely by two of the best things in life: cake and lingerie.  As I briefly mentioned in my croquembouche post the other day, I got to cook for the super-awesome student lingerie designer Karolina Laskowska for the photoshoot for her new collection.

My brief was to create something that would complement the lingerie, obviously, as well as the ‘Ellen von Unwerth feel’ that she wanted to capture in the shoot. Until then I didn’t really know anything about EvU, other than that she is celebrated for the ways in which she works with themes of femininity and eroticism. Cue a notebook of research, references, doodle of motifs from the fabrics Karolina uses, shopping lists, plans and diagrams to somehow make sure all my ideas linked back seamlessly to Karolina AND Ellen von Unwerth.

Somewhere along the line I shot Karolina an email begging for a limit. The more shots of new samples she posted on instagram, the more ideas I got, and the more I wanted to do.

Her response? ‘Oh dear, I’m not very good with limits!! I tend to think getting carried away is a good thing!’

And she’s absolutely right. Surely it can only ever a good thing to get carried away with cake and lingerie!?

At first I gave myself far too much to do. Layered fruity entremets, three flavours of macarons, three different fillings for said macarons, the croquembouche, baby meringues, a totally chocolatey tart, chocolate work, and possibly a few other things.

There were a few minor ‘how am I going to get this all done!?’ moments when trying to balance an unpredictable work schedule with prep planning for Sunday. This wasn’t really helped by a decision to go to the pub on Saturday night. So in the end I just stuck with two macaron flavours, two fillings, the croquembouche, chocolate tart and baby meringues, and some white chocolate butterflies.  So not much at all, really.

Considering the croquembouche was built free-hand at 2am while simultaneously finishing the chocolate tart, I reckon it all turned out amazingly well.

Note to self, perhaps I should be slightly tipsy and over-exhausted all the time when cooking?

I can’t say I ever imagined a pièce montée ending up in the positions that it did (sorry folks, I can’t be too specific here). It was a hilarious experience and a very interesting/entertaining way of food styling.

I’d love to share all the images from the shoot with you, but don’t want to go ruining any surprises. So instead here’s some of the food ones that I took. I’m really proud of these images, especially considering they’re unedited. My food styling still leaves a lot to be desired in most cases, and I’m only just getting the hang of the manual settings on my camera, but I’m really happy with these!

And hopefully I’ll manage to get my hands on a few of the images taken by our lovely photographer for the day, Simon Crinks.

Thank you so much to Karolina for last weekend, it was awesome to finally collaborate.  It was wonderful to get to work with Simon, Emma, Yassmin & Violet too! Lastly, thanks Mom for helping me schlep everything for the shoot to the opposite side of London at a horrible hour of the morning!

Macaron Meringue Mayhem

Croquembouche

I think it’s only appropriate that I start a new year / a new crack at writing  with something as extravagant as this. I had lots to celebrate last year, and a whole lot more to look forward to this year. But let’s start with a close friend’s 21st a couple weeks ago, and a lingerie shoot over the weekend!

The 21st was the first time I’ve ever attempted something of this scale and technique – I’m all about challenging myself ya know.

But next time I try this, someone remind me to never again make something with this many processes in one day and for the first time.

Everything went swimmingly to start with. My creme pat turned out very nicely, as did the almond praline base. Then came the choux pastry. I had forgotten how much it puffs up in the oven, so piped what I thought was a relatively small amount, and ended up with a load of massive nobbly blobs. It took a few batches to really get the hang of it, but I did eventually end up with about 70 beautifully uniform, crisp choux pastries.

But then came an epic battle with caramel. Normally I can make a caramel with no problem whatsoever (see almond praline photo), but this time it took 4 batches, 2 1/2 kg of sugar and every single pan I had in the house to get it right. Normally I can make a caramel with no problem, but that was just a no go. There were caramel strands scattered all over the kitchen, my hair, and even melted into my scarf and the furry hood of my coat as it melted a bit in the car..

Despite all my frustrations, this was one of the most fun things I’ve made in a long time, and it came together brilliantly. Most importantly the birthday boy was very happy!

That and no one broke a tooth on the caramel.

The second time around, I had no such problems. A very good thing as I put enough pressure on myself as it is and I really didn’t want to cock up such an exciting project.

This croquembouche was for one Miss Karolina Laskowska. My brief was quite simply to come up with something exciting, that fits with her brand, for the shoot for her stunning new lingerie collection. And a cry for help limiting myself with ideas was met with ‘I’m not going to be much help as I tend to think that getting carried away is a good thing.’ Hmm.

But I shall write more on this later.

As I don’t yet have my own recipes developed, I just used the sbs.com.au recipe for the creme pat and Eric Lanlard’s choux pastry recipe. Having said that, I did change up the creme patissiere recipe a little, so here’s my version.

Creme Patissiere:

1 litre milk

250g caster sugar

50g unsalted butter

2 eggs, plus 4 egg yolks

130-140g plain flour

3 tbsp amaretto liqueur

Warm the milk, butter and a quarter of the sugar (exactly 62.5g, but we’ll go with 65g to make things easier) in a pan.

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs, egg yolks and the remaining sugar until the sugar has dissolved and the eggs are very pale. Next whisk in the flour (you may not need all of it!) and a little of the hot milk mixture.

Slowly pour the egg mixture back into the hot milk and allow to cook for 3-4 minutes, or until thick and glossy. If you’re using plain flour, you might need to allow it to cook for a little longer to get rid of the floury taste.

When it’s ready, stir in the amaretto. Strain the custard into a bowl and place cling film over the surface of the custard. This prevents a skin from forming. Place in the fridge to cool and set a little more. I found that I didn’t get quite enough custard for all the profiterols, so I would make at least another half recipe next time.

A Short Tour of Ben Thanh Market, Saigon

Before I wax lyrical about the joys of Vietnamese cooking and the brilliant day I had at the Saigon Culinary Arts Centre, I was to take you on a short picture tour of the Ben Thanh market. If you’ve followed the adventures of here for a while (hi Mom, hi Figgy) you’ll remember the incredible market we found in Sarajevo.

I’m almost sad to say though, that Ben Thanh blows it out of the water. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much beautiful produce in one area in my life.

The market was a whirlwind of noise, sights, and smells. A total assault on the senses. Market vendors sat on small stools, stripping the skins off frogs in one swift movement (weirdly cool to watch. Um, I mean fascinating), others bargained hard with customers, others yelled out to the few westerners to give their products a try. And still another crouched on a counter, using a giant set of scales as a makeshift table from which to scoff a giant bowl of noodles. AS IF any chef on this side of the planet would be able to pull that stunt at work.

Anyway, enough words. Enjoy these endless mountains of every possible ingredient under the sun (and then some).

How beautiful do these look!? I wanted to buy the whole basket!