Cooking and Experimenting With Food On the Boat.

French Bread Again
3 loaves are too much for 2 people so I decided to make 6 rolls.
Par cook 3 of them and then re-cook the next day

It worked well. Also my son Dan suggested that I try orange juice in the dough to get a sour dough feel. Not sure if that worked I may not have used enough, Trial and error again.
The problem on the boat is that the oven is not brilliant.
I don’t think it is hot enough.
It took a lot longer to cook the bread and I didn’t get the same colour as normal
It tasted excellent but was a heavier crumb than I achieved at home. I will try this again at home
Nice little ficelle!!! Pre bake

Par cooked

Made a tasty salad.
Baby Cos lettuce, avocado, hard boiled eggs, freshly ground black pepper and a

quick omelet made from the remainder of the egg wash. Cooked the Chinese way.
Hot oil and cook in seconds.
Fluffy and fabulous
Vinaigrette and topped with slivered Almond Accents

Served with terrine and fresh bread
Great lunch

I stupidly did 2 ridiculous things
One I used my old and loved quiche dish - over 20 years old
- as a water container, to provide steam for the bread, whilst cooking.
When I glanced in I saw the water had evaporated (funny that!!!)

I reacted without thinking and threw in some cold water and guess what it cracked!

Goodbye old friend

My next stupid mistake. I wanted to dip the strawberries in chocolate…so I popped a plastic bowl on top of the simmering water…luckily I discovered the bowl was about to melt just in time.
Well the bonus of this is I had to turn the chocolate into Ganache
And dipped the strawberries into that
Yum much nicer than ordinary melted chocolate

After the strawberries had been dipped some raspberries and blackcurrants were mashed into the Ganache.
Chilled and rolled into little truffles

I had made Gary Rhodes Crumble Topping

(I'll post it later, it's very good, it will keep in the freezer)
So I dipped the truffles in the crumble.
These are fantastic.
More excellent trial and error

For a crowd I would make smaller balls and pop the crumble in the food processor to make a finer crumb.
Dale has been busy with the boat. He has replaced new carpet in the cabins. Taupe… cut pile very attractive.

Lunches and Dinner of Leftovers

There is a new product on the market Round Turkish Bread wrapped and with a reasonably long shelf life good for boaties with limited fridge space.
Makes a good pizza base.

I made a quick tomato sauce, onto the base

Dobbed the left over fennel puree click here
on top.
Bacon on my half

Covered with grated cheese bit of fresh herb on the top.
An excellent quick boat lunch

Now for the re-cooked bread
Another lunch we enjoyed

Remainder of roast pork, smoked salmon, apple and ginger chutney (previous post)
Lettuce tomato, Castello blue cheese
Starting to feel really summery now.

Dinner was once again using leftovers.

I am reading a great book by Simon Hopkinson
a Chef from Britain. He is a new find and I highly recommend this book.
“Roast Chicken and other Stories” This is a book that along with Mrs. David, Mrs. Child, Nigella’s “How To Eat” should grace ones’ bookshelf.
He mentioned a sauce called an Old Fashioned Egg Sauce, using hardboiled eggs of which I had two…

It is a béchamel sauce originally flavoured with anchovy, bay leaf, onion etc and finished off with cream and parsley
My sauce was simpler, I adapted it using Mainland Chili and Garlic Infused Butter
No cream or anchovy. Tasty nevertheless

Roasted 2 pieces of buttercup squash
Sat that on the egg sauce.

Topped the lot with leftover meat sauce from the previous night’s spaghetti and meat sauce

This was delicious
The problem with experimental dishes...because I am always looking for something new... I rarely get back to these ideas…but the egg sauce and meat sauce with something in between is a keeper.

Lasagne maybe...now that’s an idea!!!