Aaah - lots and lots of relaxing this weekend. After a hectic couple of weeks, we got back to chilling out and cooking nice food.
There's lots to tell, too.
Focaccia
Ingredients for the focaccia
Knead flour, water, olive oil, salt, yeast and pepper into a wetish dough. Roll out and cover in whole granules of rock salt, coarse cut garlic and rosemary, being generous with everything. Simple but awesome.
Focaccia
Traditional Lasagna with an onion gratin
For lasagna filling: beef, onions, garlic, lots of pepper, sugar, half a can of tinned chopped tomatoes, celery, a little tomato puree and plenty of olive oil. Cook for 40 minutes at least, until rich.
The onion gratin was something inspired by Jamie Oliver's How to Cook. Mixed onions in baked with rock salt and olive oil until very soft, then covered with creme fraiche, pepper, Gruyere and Parmesan and more baking until really crisp and golden.
Lasagna
Onion gratin
Jo's Roast
Jo boshed together an absolutely kicking roast with her mum Linda which was the perfect complement to a bottle of white wine and a lazy Sunday.
Here are the highlights, look at the spread at the end!:
Chocolate and Hazelnut Torte
This was the most ambitious recipe this weekend.. and started badly when I realised how hard hazelnuts are to shell! It's my fault, Jo went to the supermarket to get them and I insisted on the phone to get the ones in shells rather than pre-peeled because they'd be "more fresh". Bleh. Next time getting pre-peeled.
How I made it might be a bit unconventional but I made this up so here goes:
2 big bars of Galaxy chocolate
A small pot of double cream
30g of butter
6 digestive biscuits
About 50 hazelnuts, ground to dust
Melt the chocolate then add butter and cream. Keep the heat high - I made the mistake of turning the heat down, but when the cold ingredients went into stuff started to solidify and it was scary. High heat :)
Whisk the ground hazelnuts (which smelt absolutely incredible) very vigorously into the chocolate mixture.
Crush up 6 digestive biscuits and melted butter.
Press the base into a torte dish (one of those where the bottom comes up), then pour the mixture on top. Set in the fridge for at least 6 hours.
All set and ready to eat
Would you like a piece?
Oh yeah! It tasted as good as it looks. A bit underprepared, no ice cream - I think it'd be the finished article with a scoop of the best vanilla you can find.
