Monthly Archives: October 2015

Algonquin

Adapted from The Ultimate Cocktail Book:

5 ice cubes
30ml pineapple juice
30ml Noilly Prat
60ml Jack Daniels
4 thin lime wedges

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Not an instant favourite but nice enough for slow sipping.

Mushroom pie with rough puff pastry

mushroom_pie_rough_puff_pastry

Made this: chicken_and_wild_mushroom_pie using just mushrooms, clitocybe geotropa to be precise. I made the pastry using Gordon Ramsay’s method: Rough-puff pastry. It worked well, apart from needing twice as many mushrooms as I did use. I ended up bulking out the filling with sprouting broccoli. Also the leaves I put in the centre of the pastry top meant it was thicker there so didn’t cook as well. But I was pleased with my first attempt at rough puff.

25 & 29 Nov 16
Needs baking at 200C. Lower than that won’t puff it up. Let the edges hang over the sides by a half cm or so – helps prevent sinking in the middle and juices leaking out. If keeping some pastry in the fridge for later, don’t roll that part out because, when you unroll it for the next use, it cracks. Might be ok if it is taken out of the fridge a bit earlier though. Let the filling cool before placing pastry on top, otherwise butter in pastry will melt. Leave a gap between the filling and pastryk, otherwise underside of pastry will be soggy. Don’t use egg to glue the crimped edge down as you won’t be able to easily unstick pastry when serving.