Mushroom Bourgignon

Gosh I started making this recipe way back in 2009, and have been meaning to post it ever since. It's become a staple favourite of mine, especially in cold weather, and I have evolved so far from the original smitten kitchen recipe that I don't even know if it still is what I claim it is!

Sundays with Joe: Puff Pastry

One week, 2B1M suddenly sent me a link to pasteis de nata, which she'd seen on pinterest or something, and then I grinned and sent her here. That was the weekend we'd planned on puff pastry, so it all dovetailed nicely, and we set out on this magical adventure. Which was totally worth it.

Sundays with Joe: Pasteis de nata

My dear baking-loving friend 2B1M and I have decided that we are going to try and bake our way through Joe Pastry, especially since he has all those recipes we've been dying to try, like puff pastry and croissants and eclairs. So, during the week, in all our food porn reading, we decide on something and on Sunday, bake it. This means we can offload it on colleagues on Monday morning and refrain from eating our own weight in butter. (Sorry for the horrible photo it was like 8pm.)

The Scientist's evil potato bake

Many years ago (something like twelve or thirteen urk) I made a friend in college. She was a local and used to periodically take me home with her and feed me real food, as opposed to hostel mess. In fact I used to carry a toothbrush in my bag so I could disappear at the drop of a hat heh. Her very cool father let us drink from his posh bar and make cocktails and whatnot--there was a notable night involving several blue lagoons, and that's where I learnt to make Long Island Iced Tea. The highlight of those evenings was not the booze, but this INSANE potato bake she used to make.

Gingerbread cookies

As a kid I never liked ginger cookies (I think everyone says this heh). For the life of me I don't know WHY I ever decided to bake any (maybe I wanted to do a house but chickened out), but I did for my 2012 christmas cake party, and they were such a hit, even with me, that I have made them a bit of a tradition now. The recipe is from the lovely Annie, of course duly tweaked by yours truly.

Christmas is here!

And you have two recipes! First up, Christmas Cake.

When I moved to Delhi in 2010 the Dragon and I were thrilled with our spanking new house and decided we wanted to have a christmas party. We made many plans but I don't remember if we did bake all the things we planned, and we didn't have many guests--only the Glare if I remember right--but I did make my hero Joe's Old School Fruitcake for the party. And dear lord in heaven. I decided immediately that I had to make it every single year. And thus was born the annual Christmas Cake Party, in it's fourth edition this year.

Wholewheat pizza!

You might remember my excited experiments with pizza in the past. Recently I discovered how easy it is to get fresh yeast in Delhi and since then my pizza making has gone to a whole new level. For starters, please ditch the false lore that states pizzas require sauce and cheese. They don't. No, really. Second, also toss out the idea that they need to be round. Ever since my pizza revolution, as I like to call it, I've been making them all the time in my rectangular baking pans and putting all sorts of things on them. I've done potatoes+cheese+onions, random pasta sauce+cheese, potatoes+sausage+cheese, random veggies+cheese and my most recent favourite, blanched spinach, potatoes, onions and eggs. That's right, no sauce, no cheese. Of course all these things get eaten so fast I rarely get pictures, so here's one I took this morning of reheated lunch, terribly lit in the direct sunlight from my kitchen window and gently speckled by the shadow of the mesh.